Barbara Hulanicki has probably heard it all before, but still I can’t help myself gushing like a teenage fan meeting her pop-star idol. “My mum had some of your clothes,” I say excitedly to the founder of legendary London store Biba. “She used to show them to me but I wasn’t allowed to wear them. My favourite was a black and gold halterneck top, with the Biba logo across the front. She still has it.” Pause. “It’s beautiful.”

Hulanicki, now 72, responds with a deep, sensuous laugh. Her Kensington shop changed the buying habits of a generation, achieving huge popularity in the 1960s and 1970s. There are probably tens of thousands of women who, like my mother, hang on to their original Biba designs.

“I love to hear that people still keep the clothes,” she says, her porcelain English accent giving no hint of her Polish roots. “They weren’t meant to be clothes you could keep, though -- that was the point. Biba was about throwaway fashion, about having fun and being young. They were young people’s clothes designed by young people. That was the draw.”

Although Hulanicki’s original vision for Biba has long since disappeared (she left the brand in 1975, and the store closed shortly after that), her glamorous emporium continues to fascinate. Original Biba clothes now fetch thousands of pounds in vintage stores and at clothing auctions, while Biba memorabilia, including Hulanicki’s own book A To Biba, still captivates nostalgic fashion devotees.

For now she is promoting a new documentary about her life, Beyond Biba, which includes candid interviews with Hulanicki about Biba and her more recent career as an acclaimed interior designer, living and working in Miami.

“The film was made by Louis Price, the son of an ex-Biba employee,” explains Hulanicki. “I used to work with her in the offices and she phoned me up to say Louis wanted to do a film about me. I agreed, thinking it would just be a small thing, but here we are, off to LA and then the UK to publicise it.”

Hulanicki set up Biba in 1964 with the help of her late husband Stephen Fitz-Simon, known as Fitz. The brand started as a mail-order service for a single gingham dress before the first store on Abingdon Road, Kensington, opened in September that same year. The success of Biba’s distinctly youthful and -- crucially -- affordable designs meant the couple soon outgrew the premises. Within a year Biba moved to a bigger store on Church Street, also in Kensington, before finally moving to Kensington High Street in 1969, where the shop remained for four years.

The last move helped lure a host of celebrities, including Mick Jagger, Mary Quant and Brigitte Bardot. Anna Wintour, now the editor of American Vogue, also worked in the shop for a spell. Eventually Hulanicki moved her wares to a large department store building nearby, which would later be known as Big Biba. Opened in 1973, it sold everything from Biba baked beans to feather boas, and attracted customers in their droves.

Hulanicki remembers those times with mixed emotions. “It was amazing, but sometimes I would take a look at the shop floor on a Saturday and it was like a bomb had exploded,” she says. “There were women trying on loads of our designs in the fitting rooms -- we didn’t have a maximum number you could take in at that time -- and it would be a constant battle to get the clothes back on to the shelves again. Our offices were in the back so I had to walk past it, but I rarely stayed in among it. Fitz loved the atmosphere, though.”

Since 1987 Hulanicki has lived in Miami, one of the most notoriously party-loving cities in the United States, largely because of the weather, but there are other reasons too. She loves the beach, the architecture and her home, even though it lacks any interior design flourishes. “My tastes are simple,” she says. “All I need is a bed and a TV. When you design for a living it’s not what you want to do when you get home. I’ve never got around to doing my own place.”

These days, she admits she dresses for comfort and rarely wears anything other than black. In terms of contemporary labels she favours the relaxed, cool clothing of young American designer Alexander Wang, although a big T-shirt is all she needs for the beach. “That’s what everyone wears here,” she says. “It’s so hot. I only buy clothes for travelling or going to Europe.”

And then there’s those sunglasses. Hulanicki is never seen without her favourite large black shades. “I can’t see without them, darling,” she says, laughing. “I was sitting in a hotel lobby one day. The band U2 were sitting opposite me and being interviewed. The journalist turned to me and started asking what Bono was like when he was younger. I thought, ‘How would I know?’ It turned out the journalist thought I was Bono’s mother because of the glasses we were both wearing.”

Black dominated many of the dresses made by Hulanicki, but Biba also became synonymous with plums and purples, not to mention incredibly short dresses. For young, fashion-conscious shoppers of the day it was exhilarating stuff. Stock would change in the shop every few weeks -- normal practice now, but unusual in the 1970s when collections came twice a year -- so there was always something new to buy.

“We weren’t following trends,” says Hulanicki. “We were making them. There was no such nonsense as ‘purple is in now’ or anything like that. People didn’t make those kinds of predictions about fashion. They just wore what they wanted.”

Biba has been relaunched several times, most recently in 2006 with Bella Freud as head designer, although the brand has never again reached the heights of success it enjoyed in the 1970s. Hulanicki’s talent, though, has remained in vogue. In the last 20 years she has designed interiors for some of Miami’s most prestigious hotels, including The Marlin and The Cavalier, besides one-off private homes. She also recently produced a capsule collection for Topshop and is designing another, which will be released next year.

“That was great fun -- I love the energy at Topshop,” she says. “I loved being around the team -- they’re all women, and I find that so inspiring. I don’t think I’d want my own label today though -- it’s too much work and things are too disjointed. Now you have to get your manufacturing done halfway around the world. At Biba we did everything in house. That’s what was so great about it.”

 

Beyond Biba: A Portrait Of Barbara Hulanicki shows at the Glasgow Film Theatre, Rose Street, Glasgow, at 6pm on Tuesday. Barbara Hulanicki will be holding a Q&A session immediately after the film. Visit www.gft.org.uk.