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Arts Intel Report

The Biba Look: Photography & Fashion

Helmut Newton, Biba Fashion, Spring-Summer 1969.

Oct 3, 2026 – Mar 21, 2027
Royal Pavilion Gardens, Pavilion Parade, Brighton BN1 1EE, United Kingdom

A store can change your life. Young people, especially, never forget the experience of stepping into a new vision of how to look and live. Fiorucci in Milan and New York. Agnes b in Les Halles, Paris. And before them, Biba on Abingdon Road—a touchstone of the Swinging London 60s. It started as a mail-order boutique, founded by Barbara Hulanicki and her husband, the advertising executive Stephen Fitz-Simon, and was soon famous for an aesthetic that blended Art Deco, Art Nouveau, and Dolly Bird grooviness. Biba was massively influential for a new generation of designers and is still remembered reverently. With Hulanicki coming up on her 90th birthday in December, this exhibition in Brighton explores the six Biba photographic catalogues that she created over an 18-month period in the 1960s, working with photographers that included Helmut Newton, Sarah Moon, Donald Silverstein, Hans Feurer, and Harris Peccinotti. Fashions from the catalogues are included in the show. —Laura Jacobs