How did you get involved with Biba and what were your main position(s) there?
Howard: I needed a job in Central London for the summer of 1968 (the year of revolutions!) as I wanted to spend it with my new boyfriend, Chris — at the time we were studying at Hull University. I responded to an advert in the Evening Standard for shop girls for Biba — definitely the best shop in town. I was especially drawn to the "clothes allowance” they mentioned. When I arrived there was a queue all round the block in Church Street so I joined at the end and began to wait. I was just about to give up and go home when a very exotic looking, tall girl swept down the line, picked me out and took me into Stephen Fitz-Simon’s leopardskin office for an interview. Fitz, as he was known, was Barbara’s husband and business partner.
I think I must have looked quite interesting, as I got the job. After a couple of weeks it was discovered that I was a perfect size 10 for fittings and when I went over to the office as a fit model, I was kept on to work as a buyer. Because I was still in school, I used to come back from Hull at weekends, and would stay with Barbara to try on all the clothes. When I finished school, Barbara offered me a job as cosmetics buyer as they were moving the store into the first High St. Kensington shop. I accepted and stayed until the end of the big store in 1975 (still trying on all the clothes!).
Apart from Cosmetics and fittings I did many other jobs; press, household, accessories, etc. And I was the makeup artist for photoshoots until the wonderful Regis Huet arrived in the big store where he ran the beauty parlour.
Presumably, as the fit model you had a bird's eye view on Barbara's design process. Can you tell me about that?
Barbara’s design process – for clothes as for all the many other things produced – always started with a beautiful drawing. She sat in our open plan office drawing and drawing, or would come in in the morning laden with sheaves of them. For the clothes, she passed the sketches to the workroom (often with copious notes) who made a “toile” (rough garment in muslin). The muslin would be tried on me, corrected by Barbara, and then made up in fabric which often had been specially printed for Biba in Biba color ways. Again, when the sample came from the manufacturer, there were more fittings until it was right. Barbara was a perfectionist and didn’t scrimp on time or fabric in spite of the low prices.
Are there any memories of your time that stand out to you?
Memories that stand out? So many! Here are a very few…
The impact of walking into the Church Street shop for the first time. It was dark, glittering, and mysterious. It was like a wonderful souk, with an intricate dressing table for trying on jewellery, great music, and sofas in the window where people lounged.
Working in an office, full of young girls –Barbara among us – bustling away to get everything made. I remember a huge bottle of Guerlain’s Mitsouko in an alcove and lots of laughing. When we went out into reception to see salesmen from various companies for the first time, they tended to look past us to see the real buyer. There was absolutely no time wasting in the way of “meetings” and rules of working – but wasting time because you were having fun was OK. Everything came from Barbara, thought she had input from all sides, and she took responsibility for everything.
Buying trips abroad. They were really hard work but traveling with Barbara (and often Fitz) we stayed in great hotels with very, very luxurious and loud meals – especially when we were researching for the restaurant in the Rainbow Room. (In fact, I’ve never got out of the habit of trying everybody else’s food — and trying to see into the kitchen!)
Going in with great trepidation to make up the New York Dolls for their gig and finding them absolutely delightful.
How did you see the Biba designs affecting the culture at the time? In my mind it has a symbiosis with the music scene at the time, considering that so many musicians shopped there. Do you think that visual musicians like Bowie and T.Rex were directly influenced by Biba?
I think Biba designs inevitably affected the culture at the time, especially regarding the music scene. In the big store extravagance unbounded and Barbara encouraged experimentation. It became normal to dress in extreme styles, a look that continued in the Punk era, after Biba ended.
I believe I saw that you were involved in designing the cosmetics range. What was your vision for the range and how it coordinated with the multitude of other Biba products. For instance, did you factor in, say, the current line of homeware and clothing lines in when choosing the color range?
I wasn’t really involved in designing the cosmetics range, Barbara came up with the revolutionary colours. She always saw colour as itself and in relation to everything else, but with the cosmetics she was even more discerning and playful.
She was inspired by Hollywood film makeup lines to build up a huge range of colours and NOT to delete them with the seasons. It was all her brilliant ideas which included cosmetics for black women, cosmetics for me, and very ethical manufacturing by the company who made “Beauty Without Cruelty”.
I also read that you had a hand in designing the rooftop gardens. (Which, by the by, I visited the last time I was in London and even then they were magical.) Can you tell me a bit about that?
When Biba moved into the big store and inherited the roof garden, Chris and I had just bought a little cottage in the east end. It had a garden and I was obsessed with it – I used to bring in plants to show Barbara. As with the cosmetics, (and everything else!) it was Barbara who designed the garden. She really enhanced it, making everything more opulent and beautiful. During that time period it was probably the best it’s ever been, before or since. I especially remember great floats of creamy plants by the canals in the Spanish garden, and black and white Irises underneath Andrew Logan’s giant mirror Irises in the Tudor garden.
I did give practical expertise and was a member was a gardening club in the evenings when we did all the planting –dressed entirely in Biba of course. I remember once getting up with very muddy hands to be introduced to Tony Curtis, who shook them without a flicker!
How did those years influence your post-Biba life?
Working for those years at Biba was revolutionary in my life. Iit was a combination of hard work (I sometimes felt frighteningly ill equipped to do my job) and great fun. Barbara and Fitz were wonderful – they allowed you and wanted you to contribute in every way. I learned so much, and I didn’t really realize fully how much until later.
I’m so glad that Barbara is still around (though I miss Fitz!) beautifying everything in her extraordinary way and that I’m still in touch with her. We still laugh a lot.
