Biba was the first — and possibly the only — shop that was witty in itself and a magnet of style, quite apart from the slightly louche and tawdry sophistication of its merchandise. As high camp as Aldershot, as it was once described, it articulated perfectly the defiant, fun-loving mood of its moment. Everything about Biba was tongue-in-chic, echoing a deco world as outrageously OTT as Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford and the Hollywood extravaganzas it mimicked in pastiche.
I loved the men’s floor especially, with its Mistress Room — including a huge, satin-sheet bed, leopard-skin cushions and a pink marble bath — selling G-strings and other wicked pieces of underwear normally available only in the darker recesses of Soho in those days. The first floor was so heavy with leopard skin, gilt Egyptian mirrors and extravagant arrangements of oriental lilies that it really only needed Sarah Bernhardt draped over the huge four-poster to complete a picture of decadence that was, at heart, unbelievably innocent. It even had a food hall, which was unheard of in a fashion shop in those days. How ahead if its time it was.
And this is the point: Biba wasn’t a shop so much as a gloriously theatrical film set that enabled dreamers and poseurs to slip into what they felt was their real world. It was the social and emotional precursor of all the new-romantic clubs that, for a few hours at least, turned fantasy into reality for thousands of young clubbers in the 1970s.
Welcome to Big Biba (Antique Collectors’ Club £19.95)