As “Felicity Green on the Fashion Scene”, the self-styled fashion journalist who has died aged 100, introduced a new younger female readership to the idea that fashion could be fun, funky and more financially accessible than the haute couture of the 1950s.
The 1960s had dawned with new designers aiming at less monied customers who had youth and attitude on their side. And it turned Felicity Green into the most influential fashion editor of her day. In her role as associate editor at the Daily Mirror she would eventually become executive women’s editor of all the Mirror’s titles, and in 1973 the first woman to be appointed to the board of a national newspaper.
Her timing was fortunate, for there were rich pickings to be had. This was the era of Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton, Mary Quant – and the transformative Biba look that she helped launch in the mid 1960s. Biba was born in the shape of a £3 pink gingham dress design with matching headscarf that Green had commissioned from designer Barbara Hulanicki, and promoted in a double-page spread in early 1964. She anticipated it would raise a maximum 3,000 mail orders, but was stunned when it reached 17,000. That pink dress generated the opening of the first Biba boutique on Abingdon Road, Kensington followed by a five-storey shop on Kensington High Street. The stores celebrated a high gothic vibe with nonchalant shop assistants wearing black lipstick and thick eyeliner, where customers were free to explore at ease.
Green herself was no true fashionista. With her fluffy bob and serious expression, she admitted to never having been fashionable. “Fashion,” she averred, “needs to be followed at a very, very respectful distance. My blueprint for fashion is to be simple and stylish.” As the market moved away from exorbitant high-end fashion, young people flocked to Biba.
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