After a morning at the Tate B I took the boat down to London Bridge, forgetting it was tourist season and it is not as much fun to travel by boat in tourist season. It was worse on the way back west because overloaded boats didn’t pick up any new passengers and that was irksome especially as it was the only day it rained. Nonetheless, I was largely lucky to miss both horrible heat and deluges of rain, so hardly worth complaining.

While my first stop was the Shirley Russell exhibit for Ken Russell’s The Boyfriend, the other exhibit I was there to see was BIBA, the fashion phenom that defined swinging London. It was my first time at the museum which used to be Zandra Rhodes‘ attelier (I think!) and while small, it packs in quite a lot of material and uses its space well.

‘It isn’t just selling dresses, it’s a whole way of life.’

~ Barbara Hulanicki

Clothes were the heart of the BIBA brand, but when you’re hot you’re hot, so they moved into all manner of other products, some of which must have seemed odd even then.