Her autobiography is dedicated to all the optimists, fatalists and dreamers. Biba, the clothing chain that Barbara Hulanicki and her late husband, Stephen Fitzsimmons (Fitz) started in 1964 spoke to generations of them.
It began with one rather infamous pink gingham frock. Biba shook London, and indeed the world, out of a dreary, shell-shocked fug. It was to be the beginning of high street fashion.
That Biba legend, and the extraordinary life of Hulanicki, is explored in a new documentary, Beyond Biba.
For the Polish born Hulanicki, the film captures the Biba’s spirit - of rebellion, of fun, of girls being girls - well.
Including interviews with former “Biba girls”, and the odd vox pop with the likes of Ronnie Wood from the Rolling Stones and Twiggy, it’s a vibrant portrait of a time when possibility seemed endless.
“They found all this funny old footage,” says Hulanicki on the phone from Miami where she now lives, “but there was very little video footage and photography really. Not actual reportage – it used to be rather bad taste to take pictures of people then, funny isn’t it?”
Biba belonged to the nostalgia inducing “swinging sixties” and heightened seventies in London. The rules were chucked, and fashion went from dull and matronly to thrilling, shocking even, and unlike anything else. But it wasn’t planned.
“Biba was very much part of what was happening. But it was never a contrived thing. You were doing things you wanted yourself and other people bought it because they wanted it too. Every one was scratching everybody else’s back. But it was very natural. Not like it would be today with the marketers,” says Hulanicki.
Just about everybody could afford a new Biba frock for a hot Saturday night date, with baubles and boots to match. Keeping up with demand proved to be an exhausting constant for Hulanicki and Fitz.
“At the time we worked so hard, you have no idea, just to keep up with it all. We were always terrified they were all going to leave. But they kept wanting new, every week,” says Hulanicki, as though she still can’t quite believe it.
The loss of Biba in 1975 to the bureaucratic pinstripe suit brigade was to be a very low point.
“It was terribly sad, we very shocked… When I look at it now, we were doing something you really enjoyed, but you never thought it had value…You had the older people who didn’t approve so you assumed it was rubbish. Now people are taking it seriously!”
Indeed there remains a certain rabid attachment to Biba. Biba frocks sell for a mint on EBay. Everybody wants a piece of it. In the epilogue to her autobiography, Hulanicki wrote that she longs for the “old girl” to be put to rest.
“I don’t know, someone always keeps buying it [Biba], why won’t they stop it? Somebody else just bought it now, ” says Hulanicki.
“It can’t be recreated, it was a period. The people that came into the shop were really special...it was the same crowd milling around.”
Hulanicki now divides her time between her design company in Miami and working on other projects. Her first interior design project was a bar for Ronnie Wood. She takes pleasure in testing out what she can get away with.
Turns out, quite a lot.
“I had to do this collection of espadrilles recently, so I thought, what is the stupidest thing to put in espadrilles? Feathers. They did really well!” says Hulanicki.
A collaboration with Topshop last year was a hoot for Hulanicki.
“It was lovely, great fun. They’re very like Biba really; they have a good way of working. There’s lots of instant energy. The problem with companies is that they plan too early…Fashion has got to be constant, instant.”
Fashion illustration has made something of a comeback. For Hulanicki, who started her fashion career in illustration, drawing has become joyful again. Her work has been exhibited in London, where Kate Moss is just one fan of note.
“It’s funny, Fitz was ahead of his time, and he would foresee things. Ten years ago, before he died, he kept saying you must get back to drawing. I hated drawing. For the five years I was doing illustration I was always sitting up all night, it had bad connotations. I never used to want to have to draw, but I suddenly started drawing and really enjoying it,” says Hulanicki.
“There are always these things that pop out of your heard that you didn’t know were there. It’s like speaking to a psychiatrist every day.”
For Hulanicki, who spent part of her childhood in Palestine and is the survivor of what she calls “disasters,” living life in the moment has become ever more important.
“I used to be always two paces ahead… Now I do today because there might not be a tomorrow,” she says.
Beyond Biba is screening as part of the Fashion Icons on Film at ACMI during Melbourne Spring Fashion Festival (August 28 – September 4) www.acmi.net.au/fashion_icons.aspx