Big Biba, the final flowering of Barbara Hulanicki's legendary Biba
store in London, was a shop like no other, before or since. It was a
fabulous fantasy palace that brought the indulgence of Hollywood to the
world of retail. Big Biba lasted just two years before it fell victim to
recession, but the myth of the most beautiful store in the world
continues to enchant both its former habitués and those who came to it
too late. Founded as a corner-shop selling just one dress, Biba had
grown in less than a decade to become a seven-storey department store
filled with own-brand products throughout. Here the committed Bibaphile
could buy not only a new wardrobe, fully co-ordinated from head to toe,
but also a complete range of cosmetics and soft furnishings, together
with the washing powder to care for her clothes, and food for both
herself and her pets, all presented in the distinctive Biba packaging.
Alternatively she could just hang out, either lounging in the
shop-windows (Biba didn't do window-displays), or sipping cocktails
upstairs amongst the flamingos that lived in the Roof Garden, or in the
Rainbow Room, where on a good night there might be a live performance by
the likes of the New York Dolls, Liberace or The Manhattan Transfer.
Welcome to Big Biba is the first book dedicated entirely to this
dreamland, with over 150 colour photographs - most published here for
the first time - of the store and of the products and graphics created
for the various departments, from bathrooms to ball-gowns, from
cosmetics to colouring-books. Styled by Steven Thomas, the designer of
Big Biba itself, and with text by Alwyn W Turner, author of The Biba
Experience, this book evokes the glamour, humour and fantasy of the
store, the audacious style that could turn a shop girl into a Hollywood
star.
