more to the stage-sets of a Hollywood musical than it did to the High Street, providing the public with romantic escapism from the misery of power-cuts and three-day weeks. It was, said the press, "the most beautiful store in the world". Or even "the hallowed Mecca of the near-decadent".

Liberace held his birthday party there, David Bowie, Mick Jagger and Freddie Mercury were regular visitors, and the New York Dolls played in the Rainbow Room restaurant, helping launch what became the punk movement. It attracted superstars, sightseers and secretaries in equal measure, all happy to spend their time ­ if not their money ­ hanging out at Biba.

And then the property crash caught up with it, and the shutters were pulled down on Biba for what seemed like the last time. "It really is the end of a dream," noted Tony Benn in his diary, having visited the closing-down sale. He showed few regrets for this "final fling for the excrescences of Sixties fashion, now all gone bust."

There have been doomed attempts to

relaunch the Biba brand ever since, though without the involvement or backing of Hulanicki herself. Most recently it was revived as an upmarket fashion label, attracting positive headlines and widespread interest for its catwalk collections. Now, it seems, the plugs have been pulled on that venture as well, though there is still talk of "keeping the Biba name alive".

But just as Benn regarded it as an anachronism in the dark days created by Ted Heath's doomed premiership, perhaps there is no room either for Biba in Gordon Brown's Britain. As belts are tightened, it is possibly time to say farewell to Biba. Finally.

Alwyn Turner is author of 'Crisis? What Crisis?', a history of popular culture and poiltics in the UK in the 1970, released this month by Aurum Press