Biba started life in late 1963 as a mail order company advertising ready-to-sew garments designed by Barbara Hulanicki, although the enterprise did not have the name Biba at that point. The garments were advertised in British daily newspapers such as the Daily Mirror. Hulanicki’s big break came when Daily Mirror’s fashion editor Felicity Green asked Hulanicki to design a garment for a feature on young designers in May 1964. Not having a name for their new enterprise Hulanicki and her husband Stephen Fitz-Simon decided upon the name Biba, the shortened version of her sister’s name Biruta. Hulanicki designed a pink gingham dress and no less than 4,000 orders were received. Eventually 17,000 of the dresses were sold. In July 1977 the rights to the Biba name were sold. The rights would be sold several times over the coming years. Since 1977 there have been a number of Biba shops and label relaunches, none of which have the involvement of Barbara Hulanicki and are therefore not considered to be true ‘Biba’ from a collector’s point of view. Barbara Hulanicki designed under her own name from 1980 – 1987, when she moved to Miami Beach and began work as an interior designer. Label notes: Biba did not label their clothing until 1968. Until that time the clothing had only a tiny white size label with with the size printed in red. The Biba font was designed by John McConnell in 1968. This label was used from 1968 around the launch of the first catalogue and it phased out in early 1971. In 1970 the font was slimmed down, as when they first tried to reduce the logo for printing on the new cosmetics range the original font couldn’t be read, so it was slimmed down especially for printing and then used on garment labels and other products as well to keep the labeling uniform. In 1971 all labels became printed (gold on black and later black on gold also like the third example). Collectors need to be aware that there is a modern Biba label that looks very similar to the vintage ones.