Focus on: Barbara Hulanicki

I haven't written one of my "Focus on" pieces for ages, which is a shame. I enjoy writing them, and also find that even though they are quite rudimentary, they help focus my mind. Whilst writing a single level narrative about a specific designer, my brain runs ahead of me making connections to novels and articles I have read and tying them together with my thesis. I want to do some serious work on my PHD application this afternoon, so i'm hoping this will help!!

From paper dresses to dresses in the paper, today's designer is Barbara Hulanicki (predominantly, this is about the Biba of the 1960s and 1970s) I say dresses in papers because Hulanicki and Biba had a start in life that many modern designers would perceive as decidedly unhip: she started selling her designs by mail order in the back of middle class British newspapers such as the Daily Express. In fact, it was from here that she got her big break; a pink gingham dress sold in the back of the Daily Mirror which enabled her to start up Biba properly.

She got this far with the support of her husband, Stephen Fitz-Simon, and Biba was a partnership between the two of them. This is interesting to me because it echos the story of Mary Quant, who was encouraged to start her business by her husband, Alexander Plunkett Green. In fact there are several reports that suggest he was "the brains" behind the whole operation. It fascinates me that two of the women that are plonked on a pedestal as icons for the generation that saw true independance for woman (in some form or another) were being held on that pedestal by business-savvy (and in Quant's cae, very wealthy) men. In May this year writing about the death of her husband in The Guardian Hulaniki said: "I wish Fitz was still around [he died in 1997]. It was so terribly hard after we'd been close for so many years. I had to learn to do all the things he'd done, like writing cheques"

Disregarding the finances (which sixties designers notoriously struggled with!) I wish I had been able to see Biba in its glory days; to soak up all the different departments (and they really did sell everything you could need) and the overall sense of cool. This description from The Independent is one of the best i've read: "Six storeys of Deco-inspired glamour, swathed in silk and satin, the walls painted black, plum and chocolate brown, with mirrored pillars and faux Tiffany lamps, ostrich plumes, peacock feathers and chrome fittings. Ten thousand feet of breathtaking opulence, the first fully developed lifestyle boutique, selling a retro-modernist vision of late-capitalist splendour two decades before anyone would fully comprehend the concept." But don't be fooled into thinking anyone would have been welcome through the doors of Biba; that side of the cultural revolution happening all around was squarely ignored. You had to be young, (and 30 was ancient!) hip, slim, and beautiful.

Biba's tagline in recent times is "a labour of love, a label, a lifestyle" and what a beautiful lifestyle. It must have been wonderfully exciting to be involved in this, and even more wonderful to wear the dresses, which are my new obsession.

If you want to know more about the Biba story there is a screening of the Beyond Biba film at the Lexi Cinema this Saturday, and the screening is followed by a Q&A with the director afterwards. Which is pretty exciting - I wish I could be there!

Hopefully more of this kind of post are to come - i'm feeling on a roll!
Love, Tor xx

Focus on: Mary Quant

"It is given to a fortunate few to be born at the right time, in the right place, with the right talents. In recent fashion there are three: Chanel, Dior and Mary Quant"
Ernestine Carter - Sunday Times



My relationship with Mary Quant and her work has always been difficult, but I would like to start this by saying how much I admire and respect her. However I struggled through my first dissertation trying to marry the passion I had for the fashion movement in London in the 1960s and the importance it had to literature at the time, with the cliched woman I met, albeit briefly, on a cold winters evening in 2007.
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Mary Quant was a relic from a bygone age telling cliche stories that, though not all true, she had told so many times before that she made them true to herself. She was a woman convinced that Vidall Sasoon had "made her" with his clever scissors and five point hair cut, and who answered my question about why she chose to bring london the mini skirt with the reply: "because I had nice legs." Nothing to do with empowerment, as I had read in a thousand text books, then.

The miniskirt, by the way, was in fact not invented by Mary Quant. Although she popularized it by selling it in her Bazaar boutique, the French designer André Courrèges actually invented it! We can't hold that against her though; although we can blame her for bringing the world hotpants.
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As I started this piece by saying, I will always admire and respect Mary Quant for her innovation and for the youth fashion that she created and gave to the world: There wouldn't be such a thing as teen fashion without her, bearing in mind that before Quant girls wore miniture versions of what their mothers chose from the powerhouses such as Chanel and Dior. Quant began as an amateur, simply making clothes that she wanted to wear that you couldn't find anywhere else. Quant's popularity was at its height in the mid 1960s, during which time she produced the dangerously short micro-mini skirt, and plastic raincoats. In 1970 Bernard Levin called her the "High Priestess of Sixties fashion".

But what Quant became after her success undermines (for me at least) the independent spirit of the liberating clothing enterprise she and her husband (Alexander Plunkett-Green, agruably the brains behind the outfit) began. Quant was overwhelmed by the interest she received from American conglomerates towards the end of the 60s and bowed to their every demand. Mary Quant dolls, called daisy of course, jostling for a place next to her home range (in the same 2007 lecture at the V&A she claimed to have invented the duvet) and make up. In fact, the poster for her cry baby mascara is one of my enduring memories of my dissertation; when advertising was stepping away from the literal, this was a big deal. By the 70s Mary Quant was a joke: a leftover from an era that didn't mean anything to anyone anymore. Mary Quant make up is all that's left of her empire now. Although I have Mary Quant stockings (still in the packet from a charity shop) and a floppy hat I picked up at a vintage fair, I would love to try her make up range.

I'm going to finish with one of my favourite stories about Mary Quant. The reason Quant used so much pinstripe in her early designs was her desire to reclaim it from what she called the "suits" who worked around her store. She wanted to invert its meaning by making it feminine and sexy; in certain books you can see pictures of men looking aghast at mannequins in her shop window wearing tiny pinstripe mini dresses and bowler hats. This sums up to me everything that Quant was to London Fashion. Oh, and the Indian man from whom Quant found all these fabrics? Mr Curry of course! Only in London in the 1960s!

NB - Any facts and dates are facts, researched a couple of years ago, but all the opinions are mine, not to be confused with reality!
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Because of my undying passion for the 60s I thought it would be nice to do profiles on some of my favourite (or the most important) designers and authors from the era; a very pleasant way to spend a Monday evening! I hope you enjoyed the diversion!


Love, Tor xx