![mandatory credit: photo by david dagley/shutterstock (60980k)[ l r ] unknown, alan jones, chrissie hynde, vivienne westwood, jordan at westwood's shop 'sex', kings road, londonvarious 1976](https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod/images/shutterstock-editorial-60980k-695d3634b050d.jpeg?crop=1.00xw:0.516xh;0,0&resize=2048:* "mandatory credit: photo by david dagley/shutterstock (60980k)[ l r ] unknown, alan jones, chrissie hynde, vivienne westwood, jordan at westwood's shop 'sex', kings road, londonvarious 1976")
For every era, there was a shop that captured the zeitgeist; it might be a high-street boutique or a grand department store, a place where people gathered not just to buy but to dance, chat and party. Ephemeral by nature, these establishments live on in the memories of those who shopped there long after the shutters came down for the last time. You really had to be there.
In the case of Biba, ‘there’ meant a succession of art nouveau-style boutiques in Kensington, culminating in founder Barbara Hulanicki’s masterpiece ‘Big Biba’, which blazed brilliantly but fleetingly at the end of the 1970s, drawing a million customers a week. Located in the 1930s Derry & Toms building on Kensington High Street, it offered fashion, food and homeware, making it arguably the world’s first ‘lifestyle store’.
Steve Thomas and Tim Whitmore were given free reign by Hulanicki to create immersive fantasy worlds on all seven floors. In the book Welcome to Big Biba, Hulanicki recalls travelling the world with husband Stephen Fitz-Simon, looking for inspiration: ‘We decided the ground floor would be mirrored like the Mistinguette bedroom at L’Hôtel in Paris, so we stayed there to try it out. The children’s floor we took from the original 1930s Disneyland in LA.’
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The prevailing sense was of excessive, louche opulence: mahogany, burnt orange and gold walls created a theatrical backdrop to pillars planted in sand-filled concrete circles that shoppers used as ashtrays. The fifth-floor Rainbow Room was like stepping back into the Jazz Age, with its coloured lighting, tiered ceiling and big band. Celebrities rubbed shoulders with students, making Biba feel both inclusive and exclusive.
The influence of Biba was noted in the documentary Elio Fiorucci: Free Spirit, in which the Italian designer speaks of the development of his own brand’s universe. Fiorucci opened his New York store at 123 East 59th Street in 1976, calling on architects Ettore Sottsass, Andrea Branzi and Franco Marabelli to help him create a ‘total experience’.
With its in-house DJs, cutting-edge fashion and free coffee, it quickly became the daytime counterpart to Studio 54, attracting everyone from Cher to a young Marc Jacobs. Madonna performed there and Andy Warhol launched Interview magazine from the space. All high-shine surfaces, primary colours, graphic patterns and futuristic materials, the interiors echoed the clothes – kitsch, sexy and playful.
Kit Grover designed the store’s windows from 1978 to 1981 after dropping out of Parsons School of Design. ‘I was 21 or 22,’ he recalls. ‘It’s as if all the silos of art/fashion/music/life emptied into Fiorucci – it was a much better education than Parsons could provide. The store was like a circus: properly sexy, a little scary, but mostly fun. Franco Marabelli was the instigator of managed mayhem. Everyone lived in a Fiorucci-shaped bubble that enabled us to play freely.’
On the King’s Road, the vibe during the 1970s couldn’t have been more different. It was here that Vivienne Westwood and her then partner Malcolm McLaren had set up shop. Their boutique went through various names and iterations, but perhaps the most memorable – both visually and in terms of cultural impact – was its 1974 rebranding as Sex.
The name, emblazoned in giant pink padded letters on the façade, immediately established an intention to shock and disrupt; the pair sold fetish and bondage wear and their own designs, which went on to define punk. The interiors were covered in graffiti and chicken wire, with rubber curtains and red carpets. Chrissie Hynde was an occasional assistant and customers included the Sex Pistols, Adam Ant and Siouxsie Sioux.
Although arguably less provocative, Mary Portas’ transformation of Harvey Nichols in the 1990s turned it from fusty Knightsbridge department store to a different kind of pop-culture icon – an experience she reflects on in her new book I Shop, Therefore I Am: The ’90s, Harvey Nicks, and Me (Canongate, £20).
As well as becoming the spiritual home of Jennifer Saunders and Joanna Lumley’s legendary Patsy and Edina in Absolutely Fabulous, the store under Portas’ leadership became known for launching a fresh wave of British design talent, as well as its headline-grabbing window displays. One saw RuPaul being made up to launch MAC’s ‘Viva Glam’ lipstick in the UK, raising money for Aids charities; another had Linda Evangelista posing in a window while being photographed by Nick Knight.
Portas recalls: ‘It’s not often that you recognise you’re in a culturally defining moment while actually living it, but watching the frenzy unfold I knew instinctively that this was one… Shopping isn’t just about filling your wardrobe with stuff or scrolling through endless pages of products online – it’s about feeling like you’re part of something.’ For her final window before leaving Harvey Nichols, Portas gave Thomas Heatherwick his first public commission. He designed a vast, surreal installation that, in an incredible feat of engineering, appeared to burst through the glass and snake onto the street.
Anyone who was a teenage girl in the late 1990s or early Noughties will remember the fizzy feeling of riding the escalators into Topshop Oxford Circus. Like Biba before it, the vibe was carnivalesque and democratic; a pilgrimage to the millennial mothership of high-street style was a rite of passage, representing freedom and the most joyful side of fashion. It was a space to try on adulthood and the interiors reflected that, incorporating every turn-of-the-millennium design trope from fluoro hues to high-shine surfaces and futuristic shapes.
Part spaceship, part nu-rave, it didn’t take itself too seriously. The flagship store secured its place in the collective consciousness with the launch of the first Kate Moss x Topshop collection in 2007. In what felt like a postmodern comment on pop culture, the supermodel turned herself into a mannequin, posing in the huge windows on Oxford Street in a slinky red dress from the limited-edition range, sparking a frenzy among the fans and photographers thronging the pavements.
Over the English Channel, a Parisian contender stepped into the ring in 1997. Founded by Colette Roussaux and her daughter Sarah Andelman, Colette on the Rue Saint-Honoré was known as ‘the trendiest store in the world’ before it closed in 2017.
It holds a special place in the heart of Avril Mair, the fashion, watches and jewellery director of Harper’s Bazaar and ELLE. ‘You had to go every fashion week and you had to get something, even if it was a CD or a candle,’ she recalls. ‘I can’t think of another shop in the world like that.’ She describes the use of the famous signature ‘Colette Blue’ (Pantone 293C) everywhere and interiors that were ‘utilitarian and industrial – a blank canvas for all this incredible stuff’. That ‘stuff’ could be a £1.50 badge or a £6,000 Chanel jacket: ‘you never knew what you were going to get’. In that sense, she argues, it was the first concept store and, with its water bar and egalitarian attitude, ahead of its time. ‘It was so inclusive – you had Kim Jones or Karl Lagerfeld shopping alongside tourists. It didn’t feel exclusive or intimidating compared with all the luxury stores in the 1st arrondissement. And they threw great parties!’
In our modern digital age, is there a store with the cultural impact to acquire a similar mythological status in the future? That remains to be seen. Many brands now choose to cultivate their fanbase online, with the occasional pop-up bringing that frenetic energy to life in the real world. Still, Portas argues, there needs to be a space for bricks-and-mortar. ‘When done right, a shop is not just a place to buy – it’s a place to belong,’ she says. ‘Retail isn’t just about transactions; it’s about energy, movement, emotion. It’s bigger than the sum of its parts.’
