Founded as a boutique mail-order service in 1963, Biba - the brainchild of designer Barbara Hulanicki - quickly gained cult status, and outgrew several London premises before landing at 99 - 117 Kensington High Street in 1973 as 'Big Biba', 'the most beautiful store in the world'.

This book tells the story of the Biba years, from the first ensembles, through the four iconic London shops, to the eventual flourishing of a lifestyle brand that revolutionized British retail and fashion culture. Featuring a wealth of previously unpublished material, including early fashion illustrations by Hulanicki and full-colour facsimiles of the six luxurious Biba catalogues, The Biba Years investigates the innovative ethos of the company - the first retailer to bring affordable fashion to the young consumers of the 1960s and '70s.

Extensive garment photography documents the unique Biba 'look', while archival images provide a glimpse into the glamorous surrounds of the hugely popular London stores. An ideal companion to A to Biba: The Autobiography of Barbara Hulanicki (V&A, 2007), this beautiful book incorporates many personal insights from the designer and her contemporaries at Biba, and includes new illustrations by Hulanicki created specially for the publication. The Biba Years provides the last word on a fashion phenomenon, whose extensive impact on the fashion industry can still be felt today.

About the Authors:

Barbara Hulanicki OBE, co-founder of Biba, is a photographer, illustrator and designer whose career in fashion has spanned five decades. She holds honorary doctorates from the Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, and the University of Brighton, and her Outstanding Contribution to Fashion was honoured at the 2011 Global Fashion Awards. Martin Pel studied art history at the University of Manchester and the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. He is Curator of Costume & Textiles at Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove, where he curated Biba and Beyond: Barbara Hulanicki (2012).

Barbara Hulanicki’s BIBA Shop grew from one room to a five-story department store as it became an icon of hip ’60s and ’70s London and a hangout for artists, movie stars, and rock musicians, including David Bowie, Twiggy, and Marianne Faithfull. BIBA’s black-and-gold Deco-style logo is still a familiar symbol of Swinging London’s heyday as a world capital of fashion, music, and the arts, but in the early 1970s Hulanicki and her husband, Stephen Fitz-Simon, lost control of their business and for Barbara, BIBA was gone. This lively autobiography evokes the adventurous spirit of the 1960s and describes an extraordinary life with clarity and wit.

About the author:

Barbara Hulanicki (b. 1936) began her fashion career in the early 1960s as a freelance fashion illustrator for the major publications of the day. In 1964 she founded, with her late husband, Stephen Fitz-Simon, the boutique BIBA, beginning as a small mail-order business and rising to be the brand synonymous with ’60s British fashion.