The Biba Look: Photography & Fashion

The Biba Look: Photography & Fashion opens at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery on 3 October, and it's a long one, running right through to 21 March 2027. It's a look back at Biba, the boutique that started on Abingdon Road as a mail-order business run by Barbara Hulanicki and her husband Stephen Fitz-Simon, and quickly became a touchstone of Swinging London. The aesthetic it became famous for blended Art Deco, Art Nouveau and 'Dolly Bird' grooviness, and its influence on the generation of designers that followed was immense.

The exhibition traces that creativity through the six photographic catalogues Hulanicki produced over eighteen months in the 1960s. Back then, these catalogues brought Biba directly into people's homes, and they were shot alongside some of the most celebrated photographers of the era. The show brings together original photographs from Hulanicki's own archive — many of which have never been seen in public before — and pairs them with one iconic garment from each of those six catalogues.

So you get the two things that made Biba what it was: the photography that sold the dream and the actual clothes that defined the look. It's a good way to see how the brand worked, from the images that went out to the garments that people actually wore. If you're into 60s fashion or the history of London's style scene, it's right up your street.

It's at the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery in the Royal Pavilion Gardens, Pavilion Parade, Brighton BN1 1EE. Entry is free with Brighton Museum admission, and members get in free. It opens on 3 October and stays on until 21 March 2027, so there's plenty of time to fit it in.