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Biba: The Biba Experience

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Manufacturer: Antique Collectors Club Dist A/C

List Price: $69.50
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Average Customer Ratings:

Biba brought the cutting-edge of couture to the masses. Brigitte Bardot, Yoko Ono and Princess Anne shopped there, whilst Sonny and Cher, Mick and Marianne, and David and Angie were regular visitors, but the store was never the exclusive preserve of the rich and famous: prices were kept deliberately low, and anyone who could tolerate the disdainful inefficiency of the staff was encouraged to soak up the glamour of a unique shopping experience. This lavishly illustrated and beautifully produced book is intended for those interested in the fashion and graphic design of the '60s and '70s, from a creative and historical standpoint, plus the huge number of people who remember Biba from the period with such affection. Alwyn W. Turner is a widely published writer on popular culture of the '60s and '70s. His work has featured in books such as The Rough Guide to Rock and in Mojo magazine and he is a contributor to the BBC Online website. His own websites Trash Fiction and Glitter Suits & Platform


PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS:

Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 746
EAN: 9781851494668
ISBN: 1851494669
Label: Antique Collectors Club Dist A/C
Manufacturer: Antique Collectors Club Dist A/C
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 240
Publication Date: 2004-09-30
Publisher: Antique Collectors Club Dist A/C
Studio: Antique Collectors Club Dist A/C


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• Welcome to Big Biba: Inside the Most Beautiful Store in the World
• Ossie Clark 1965-1974
• From A to Biba
• Swinging Sixties
• Pierre Cardin


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Very Dissapointed -
I found out about Biba while looking through a Kevin Aucoin book, he had done the make up of model Kate Moss in the style of a Biba girl. It was a beautiful picture and I just couldn't stop looking at it. The look was both ethreal gypsy and beauty. I had to find out what biba was, so I started doing research on the internet. I bought the Biba Experience exspecting it to capture a time and place. I wanted to see pictures of the people who shopped at Biba, pictures of people wearing Biba clothes I wanted to see the Biba look I wanted pictures from magazines and models and everyday people from that time. Sadly the Biba Experience is lacking in all that. While I found the information on the founder of Biba nice and infomative that same information can be found on the internet. The book had pictures of the store but no people in it, nothing that could really invoke that time and place . There were pictures of a collection of biba clothes worn by current day models that just wasn't very inspiring. I wouldn't recommend getting this book at all.

Experience Biba -
I first read this book some time ago and have been devoted to Biba design ever since, this groovy fashion label started in the Swinging Sixties and went down in a blaze of glory in the Sinful Seventies. As the back of the book says "Biba fulfilled the Rock 'n' Roll promise to live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse". As someone with an obsessive passion for Art Nouveau and Art Deco, the 1960s and 1970s and classic rock I was taken with Barbara Hulanicki's retro design ethos. Ms. Hulanicki and her business partner husband Stephen Fitz-Simon began the venture in 1964 London as a mail order business that swiftly grew until 1975 when it spectacularly collapsed. This is the story of one woman's ill fated and unconventional conception of a new way of shopping.

The Biba Experience is a history of her vision from small and intimate boutique in Abingdon Road to a large 1930s department store in the old Derry & Toms Building in Kensington High Street. She renovated and restored this grand department store (calling it Big Biba) in a sympathetic manner, retaining and expanding its original Art Deco features. Ms. Hulanicki believed that the retail experience should be memorable for the buying public and appeal to a youthful crowd, as most shops then did not. It piped rock music through Art Deco styled loudspeakers and people could sit in the front windows watching the world go by while having a cigarette and a coffee. In its time Biba played a major role in making London the hippest city in the world, models, rock and film stars could be seen shopping there and it had a powerful effect on contemporary British design. As the book explains the employees who worked there and the customers who shopped there remember it with great fondness, even people who never experienced it firsthand are affected by its infamous legend. Biba sold everything, its own label of clothes, hats and footwear, to perfume, cosmetics and records. Big Biba also had a food hall that sold every type of gourmet food imaginable, unusual for Britain of that era. There was a large space at the top level of the Derry & Toms building called "the rainbow room" that was tastefully refurbished and where one could dine while watching a rock band.

The second half of the book is taken up by a photographic catalogue of a private collection of Biba clothes and shoes. Pari owns the largest collection in the world of Biba clothing and memorabilia, in this book she puts them on display for all to see. The clothes are a mixture of then current fashions inspired by the golden age of Hollywood and "Fin de Siecle" dress reform. Sure the clothes have dated somewhat for they are very much of their era, but they are still elegant and beautiful nonetheless. I don't know if Biba could exist today in a climate where multi-national corporations are creating a banal and insipid mono-culture, it was too non-conformist. Despite this it is interesting to note that Biba is back in business again after a hiatus of over thirty years, although I suspect it's in name only. If you are a fashion-victim or just have an abiding interest in couture and fashion history I think you will enjoy this lavish coffee table book.

Extraordinary, an absolute pleasure. -
Barbara Hulanicki's Biba was less a clothing brand or department store(though that would have been enough!), than an utter immersion in a lifestyle.

If you've been sadly disappointed by the other books about Biba for having far too few pictures of the stores or the cothing, your wishes have been granted.

The sad demise of such a marvellous line simply makes a well written and thorough record like this more precious.

Buy, enjoy, and wish one could go back in time.

Magic gone like Biba's gone -
I, too, was there in the late '60s, living and working in London with Biba just across the street beckoning daily. The text in this book is informative and interesting to anyone who has done retail or wants to know about its vagaries, and the photos are superb. But it is one person's collection, and for me, the visual essence and excitement of Biba is missing. Maybe it's the fact that there are no customers with their enthusiasm, or maybe I'm just missing the amazing array of color and design that hit you at each entry into Biba's, which the book does not really capture.

Reliving the magic! -
As someone who was "there"-- a young New Yorker working for the fashion press in the late '60s, frequent traveler to London (first stop: Biba), habitue of Bergdorf's Biba Boutique for Mahogany lipstick and lucky enough to have a British friend sending catalogues and clothes, I can honestly say reading Alywyn Turner's book on Biba was like living it again. He accurately and lovingly recreates the temper of the times and the uniqueness that was Biba. He also takes you way behind the scenes (where even Barbara Hulanicki did not go in her autobiography) as to the crash and burn in 1975. I did not "get" Big Biba either, and have always felt a little guilty about that. Nice to know I was not alone. Both a beautiful coffee table book of gorgeous photogaphs, ephemera and loving detail shots of the garments. I understand Barbara was grumbling about this book and did not cooperate with the author. I think she missed being part of a great tribute. Oh yes, I never kept any of my Biba clothes or stuff. You can imagine my regret!

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