This photograph show the distinctive Biba fashion shop’s mannequins displayed in the window at the store’s third premises in Kensington High Street, London, where it had moved in 1969. (In 1974, the store expanded and moved to the five-storey Derry & Toms department store, also on Kensington High Street). Biba was started in 1964 and primarily run by the Polish-born fashion illustrator Barbara Hulanicki (b.1936) with help of her husband Stephen Fitz-Simon. Biba It became a hangout for artists, film stars and rock musicians, including Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, David Bowie and Marianne Faithful among the regular customers. The shop’s style was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, Art Nouveau and later Art Deco.

Lora Verner was born in New York in 1929, but lived mainly in Philadelphia until 1964, when she moved to London. Inspired by the work of Bill Brandt, she took a course in darkroom work at the London College of Printing in 1968. Her images of the Biba mannequins are fine gelatin silver prints made using fast film and a Rolleiflex camera. They capture and characterise the allure of the Biba style in the late ’60s, and also draw upon references to early 20th century photographs of mannequins in shop windows by Eugène Atget and by the Surrealists.