1616-50 The Queen of hotel couture by Barbara Hulanicki ♦ mhcur THE QUEEN OF HOTEL COUTURE
10/14/2001
THE MIAMI HERALD
Copyright (c) 2001, The Miami Herald
DATE: Sunday, October 14, 2001 EDITION: Broward
SECTION: Tropical Life PAGE: 1K LENGTH: 173 lines
ILLUSTRATION: color photo: Barbara Hulanicki (a) , bedroom at the Kent Hotel
(a) , the garden for South Beach' s Kent Hotel (a) , the bar at the West Palm
Beach' s Hotel Biba (a) , the Hotel Biba bar (a) ,tangerine silk pillows atop
lounges at the Hotel Biba pool (a)
SOURCE/CREDIT LINE: BY AUDRA D.S. BURCH, aburch@herald.com
THE QUEEN OF HOTEL COUTURE
Barbara Hulanicki - the eternally hip, high priestess of clothing and hotel
fashioning - has managed to be of the moment for more than four decades, an
unthinkable, immeasurable amount of time for trends to come and go.
Decidedly studied and stylish, this is someone who in the 1960s slashed and
delivered hemlines that revealed and revolted, costumed Twiggy and Cher and
opened a fab London boutique that lured the Rolling Stones, the Beatles and
David Bowie.
Some 30 years later, Hulanicki reemerged as an interior designer, plucking
the brightest hues of the Crayola box to make modern living rooms of South
Beach hotel lobbies, surviving both the pastel and white revolutions.
It ' s a design career that has made splashes on both sides of the Atlantic.
She has been referred to by a newspaper as "the Andy Warhol of London fashion
in the far-out Sixties and Seventies " and by another publication as "a
designer to die for. " Just this last decade, Hulanicki has restored and
refashioned a fleet of hotels, helping to make them a destination, a stylish
stay and a template for avant-garde living. Among her projects: the Marlin,
the Cavalier, the Kent and the Leslie on South Beach, along with Compass Point
resort in the Bahamas and Hotel Biba in West Palm Beach. Along the way,
Hulanicki grabbed a few design awards, and joined the small but potent A-list
of designers working on Miami Beach projects, including Philippe Starck of
Delano legend.
Her work is totally unexpected, tongue-in-cheek and incredibly hip, "
says impresario Louis Canales, who commissioned Hulanicki to decorate
Semper' s, a private lounge furnished in Pompeian red and ocher, in the
basement space of the Waldorf Hotel in the early 1990s.
At 64 , this is someone who acutely understands the power, the magic of
design, without the Hummer-sized egos of star stylists. It ' s not that it
hasn't occurred to Hulanicki that her body of work is older than some of her
fans; it ' s that she simply can't imagine doing anything else.
Today, on the third floor of the Netherlands Hotel, she sits behind a desk
in a wonderfully chaotic office, a mosaic of purple and pink swatches, career
clippings and books that delve into the discipline of hip.
"Oh my, it ' s hard, so hard, to talk about design and style. I am inspired
by what ' s around me, " says Hulanicki, who designs for Island Outpost, which
owns a dozen or so hotels in South Beach, Jamaica and the Bahamas. "Then I
simply do it. "
Hulanicki' s adventurous use of color, undulated forms and healthy dose of
wit were executed at a time when boutique hotels fashioned from Art Deco
buildings were becoming star-vetted temples of cool.
A zip through a Hulanicki-designed lobby, or some wink-eye in one of her
boudoirs, and all of a sudden traditional lodging seems anachronistic.
Her designs are what happens when you spend enough time with your subject.
" I would say 10 hours. I would say Barbara sat in the bar 10 hours, " says
Phil Gesue, one of a trio who own the Hotel Biba in West Palm Beach.
They asked her to redecorate this decidedly unstylish Motor Lodge, make it
into something that is both hip and sophisticated. She arrived one day and
walked into the bar space, taking in the drab pink walls and simply sat there.
Ten hours.
Now, the bar, so hip it ' s a must-do on West Palm Beach' s capricious social
calendar, is a gaggle of cubes and tables carved from a palette of lilac,
lime, pumpkin and celery.
" I think the thing that most amazed us is her eye and her ability to get
it right the first time, " says Gesue. "She never missed on the colors, never
had to go back and rethink them. "
Though born in Poland, Hulanicki was raised in England where she began her
career as a fashion illustrator. Her career as a fashion designer happened
rather haphazardly.
" I did an illustration for a newspaper. The idea was for it to accompany
an article and I would sell the dress, as part of a mail-order operation, "
she explained. "It was a little dress, a sleeveless shift, cut above the
knee, in black gingham with a matching scarf. Oh, and it only came in one
size, an American 6. And it was cheap, about $2 in American money. "
Seventeen thousand orders later, Hulanicki and her late husband, then an
ad-man, Stephen Fitz-Simon, opened BIBA, named after her sister, in 1964 , in
an old chemist shop. Before long, RIBA blossomed into a veritable shrine of
' 60s style, catapulting Hulanicki and the BIBA look (itty, bitty, affordable)
into cult status, and leading the evolution of the hip store/lounge/club.
Girl model Twiggy and Cher wore RIBA. Mick Jagger and the Beatles hung out
there. The store was thrift-store chic. Purple drapes and vinyl-checked floor.
Garments hung from hat stands. American rock music played. Hipsters dined at a
500-seat Art Deco restaurant called the Rainbow Room. And a roof-top garden
stocked live pink flamingos. It was both fab and theme-parky, if you can be
both.
"It was a place for the girls to shop and the boys to meet the girls. It
was an amazing time. But back then, we didn't realize the people who were
around us, the celebrities, " she says, wearing her trademark black, her blond
blunt cut just bobbing above her shoulders.
The store grew with Hulanicki. When she had a baby, (son, Witold) she
designed and carried children' s clothing; when she bought a house, she began
offering housewares. By the time it closed in 1976 (the couple left a short
time earlier after conflicts with the property company) , the store took up six
full floors, generated a newsletter, was a tourist attraction and an anchor in
the Swinging London movement and later, the stuff of museum retrospectives. In
the end, Hulanicki had been named the creator of one of the greatest 50
British fashion moments, proclaimed The Independent in London.
Biba "was the first shop to represent a whole lifestyle, from the hangers
to the antique coat racks, " the newspaper reported.
The couple continued to work in fashion, spending six years in Sao Paulo,
Brazil, designing and exporting clothing. She returned to London to create a
line of cosmetics, pursue fashion photography and write her autobiography,
from A to Biba, published in 1981 .
CALL FROM RON WOOD
One day in 1987, during the infancy of the South Beach renaissance,
reformed Biba-phile (and Rolling Stone guitarist) Ron Wood rung her up with an
idea that would come to define the second half of her design career.
"He says, 'Why don't you come to Miami Beach to do the interior design on
a hotel? ' We packed our bags and came on down. As it turns out, it was
actually a club [Woody' s at Fifth and Ocean Drive] , but that was my first
project here, " she says.
In 1989, Hulanicki met Chris Blackwell of Island Outpost. He commissioned
her to design the interiors for the Marlin and his other hotels in South Beach
and Bahamas. For the Marlin, at 12th and Collins, the idea was to preserve the
building' s Art Deco heritage but, "think Jamaica. "
Although Hulanicki had never been there, she created an eclectic vision she
calls, " seashore with Jamaican vibes. " Translation: waved sofas and seashell
sconces. Result: An award from the Miami Design Preservation League. Epilogue:
Six years later, Hulanicki made In Style magazine' s hip hotel edition with a
Marlin face-lift, fashioned for the future in shades of metallic. This is how
they described it:
"The Marlin' s designer, Barbara Hulanicki, has pulled out all the stops
with her 'techo-deco' vision. The new lobby dazzles - literally - with silver
walls and columns, and a brushed-aluminum bar, chaises and cocktail tables. "
That was just three years ago. The Marlin is under Hulanicki' s revisionist
knife again.
In between, Hulanicki worked on the renovations of the Cavalier and the
Leslie, bathing their sleek Deco facades in hues of lavender, cream and
yellow, and designing the interiors in a tropical style she calls
"Jam-Deco. "
In 1992, Hulanicki oversaw the restoration of the Netherland on Ocean Drive
- a luxury condo complex with 12 apartments, a penthouse, offices, boutiques
and restaurants. That project won a 1993 American Institute of Architects
award.
OBJECTIONS
And yet Hulanicki' s colorful stroke hit a sore point with the Miami Design
Preservation League.
"The league ' s position is that Barbara Hulanicki is an enormous talent and
woman with cutting-edge concepts. We have no issue with her or her work, we
just did not feel some of the adaptations were compatible with historic
restorations, " says Herb Sosa, executive director of the League.
She brushes it off.
"They gave me hell. Whatever, " she says.
In 1995, Hulanicki designed Compass Point in Nassau, also a Outpost
property. Her boldest work yet, the resort' s 18 wooden huts are awash in blue,
lavender, orange, yellow and red, the hues of the Bahamian carnival, Junkanoo.
This spring, she completed the Kent, in South Beach, where she used a daring
dose of Lucite.
"My clients love color. I do too. I think it works with the lighting we
have down here, " she says. " It' s energizing. "
Today, Hulanicki continues her work on the Marlin and the Governor Hotel,
behind the Bass Museum. And, she and Blackwell have formed a design consulting
firm, HULLC, with projects that include Hotel Biba and apartments in Mexico
City and South Beach.
Her work, she says, continues to be inspired by her surroundings.
"I walk into places and hopefully my environment helps me see a vision, "
says Hulanicki. "It ' s really all about creating moods. "
CAPTION: CRAYON CHIC: Barbara Hulanicki, top, in the lobby of the Kent Hotel
on South Beach, for which she designed the interior. Below, a bedroom at the
Kent, also designed by Hulanicki.
COOKIE KINKEAD INDOOR/OUTDOOR: Hulanicki designed the garden for South
Beach' s Kent Hotel, left, which includes mirrors and funky seating. She also
did the bar for West Palm Beach' s Hotel Biba, above.
COOKIE KINKEAD HOT SPOT: Another angle of the Hotel Biba bar, one of the
places to see and be seen in West Palm Beach.
COOKIE KINKEAD COOL POOL: Tangerine silk pillows add a splash of color to
lounges at the Hotel Biba pool in West Palm Beach.
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