ShopCurious Blog – slow, sustainable fashion & collectable curiosities

An interview with the Biba Boy who rose to our Creative Challenge, recreating a 1970s Biba dress from one of our vintage fabric bundles.

Introducing the first of two vintage Biba collections at ShopCurious. "No amount of promotion or commercialisation can replace the genuine article."

Featuring some of the best examples of coloured aquatint applied to fashion plates, the volumes depict the elegance of the Regency period – and there are nine of them for each year of publication.

Many of the clothes seen on catwalks and in fashion magazines recently have been vibrantly coloured... Is this not disrespectful at a time when we are mourning the loss of so many lives to COVID-19? 

Do you spend more time planning what to do than actually doing it? Perhaps, like me, you are an innately organised Virgo, who loves nothing better than rearranging papers in the inbox of your desk, or neatly rewriting part-completed lists for future reference?

Everything we wear has a story of manufacture, provenance, or personal signification. It also conveys a message to others. But Mulford went so far as to attribute our very state of being to our clothes.

Thea Porter was known as “the ultimate purveyor of ultra-luxe bohemian style.” Renowned for exotic fabrics and sumptuous patterned silks, inspired by her nostalgia for the Middle East...

Ahead of his time in so many ways, Gibb’s designs often featured a bumblebee motif, which became his trademark... There is one particular sketch that remains something of a mystery.

The first habits adopted elements of men’s attire and were often inspired by military uniform. A caption to a 1779 drawing by John Downman in the Fitzwilliam Museum describes, “The Lady of Henry Bunbury in the Suffolk Militia uniform, the fashion of the day.” 

Kimono are worn wrapped left side over right, something I discovered when a Japanese friend kindly informed me the (opposite) way mine was worn was only appropriate when dressing the dead for burial.

The arrival of Studio 54 in 1977 marked the beginning of the age of celebrity and unbridled, 'out there' exhibitionism. 

My enthusiasm for the brand rubbed off on my beau. We wore matching pairs of high-waisted jeans, and sweatshirts in Cortina blue.