The Biba Story at Fashion and Textile Museum

I was only vaguely aware of Biba at the time though the pull of its brand was enough to entice my sister up from Weymouth when she was still in her teens. Most of my awareness was to do with the branding and little to do with the fashion but the Fashion and Textile Museum has a good habit of telling interesting stories about fashion so I was keen to see this exhibition.

The simple plan for the day stumbled a little at the start as I was going to have lunch at their cafe but I forgot that it had been closed and the space converted to something else. Luckily there was plenty of choice nearby and I settled on Al’s Cafe where I rejected the option of a veggie breakfast because it came with chips and, instead went for Al's Breakfast which was much the same but without chips. It was very much a working person's cafe but the knew to do poached eggs and smashed avocado. It hit the spot perfectly and I would go there again.

As usual, Fashion and Textile Museum crammed quite a lot into a fairly small space and it was a slow walk around the exhibition looking at all of the garments (it was mostly garments) and reading the stories behind them.

The fashion exhibitions that I usually see, mostly at V&A, are on high-end fashion, e.g. Alexander McQueen, and in contrast to that I found most of the fashion uninspiring, though it was interesting to see some very period outfits. A lot looked like they could have come from M&S but that probably tells you more about what I know about fashion than it does about Biba.

Amongst the fairly average dresses and suits were a few stunning outfits. My favourite was a unisex trouser suit which a psychedelic pattern and widely flared trousers. I like to think that I have the courage to wear something like that. There was also a spider dress, so called because it looked as though it was covered in webbing, that was distinctly glamorous.

Biba's style changed quite a bit over the years and the texts listen all sorts of influences so there was little commonality across the outfits other than they were designed for tall thin women with few curves.

It was a fashion exhibition so while it mentioned the designs of the various shops there was only one photo of one and I do not recall reading anything about the production process, other than the sourcing of fabrics. The high turn-over of designs suggests something like today's fast fashion but that was an untold story.

On nice thing about the exhibition was that many people had clearly dressed for the occasion and the visitors were almost as interesting as the exhibits. One was even wearing a Biba trouser suit and I took the opportunity to say how much I admired it.

My simple metric for exhibitions is how long I spend there and this one occupied me for all but an hour which, given the size of the venue, was quite an achievement.