Barbara Hulanicki and her husband John Fitz Simon set up Biba in 1963 as a mail order boutique. The success of their affordable, youthful designs enabled them to open a small shop in Abingdon Road in Kensington the following year. Many of London’s fashionable new boutiques catered only for well-off customers (Mary Quant’s Bazaar, for example), but Biba attracted glamorous pop stars, bohemian aristocrats and impoverished students alike. In April 1966, the American news magazine Time published a special edition celebrating ‘London: The Swinging City’. It named Biba as ‘the most In shop for gear’.

In contrast to the futuristic styles and space age brightness of some sixties clothing, Hulanicki’s designs were inspired by the past. She created romantic, decadent garments for women swept up in the growing craze for vintage dresses. This printed cotton trouser suit combines a traditional fabric with a contemporary silhouette: a cabbage-rose print reminiscent of a furnishing fabric is used for a sharply tailored jacket paired with flared trousers.

Petra Siniawski, a leading actor in musicals at the time, bought this suit in the early 1970s. By this time Biba had taken over the giant department store, formerly Derry & Tom’s, on Kensington High Street. Siniawski had just finished appearing at the Shaftesbury Theatre, London, as the character Anita in West Side Story. 'It was a favourite outfit', she recalls, and she wore it when she accompanied her agent to a Shirley Bassey concert at the Royal Albert Hall in 1973.