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“We’ve been liberated too much.” That is the assessment of Barbara Hulanicki, once a leading light of the fashion world of the so-called Swinging Sixties, who now argues that the sexual revolution sparked then has moved to worrying extremes over the intervening years.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, Ms Hulanicki points to wide availability and use of the Pill in Britain today to illustrate her contention.
Once an uncritical supporter of the Pill, recalling “I went on it, it gave me a happier life”, Ms Hulanicki today criticises the Pill’s accepted use among girls far younger than she was when it first came on stream in the 1960s.
“What’s scary now is that there are very young girls taking it,” Ms Hulanicki says. “They’re starting too early. It’s not about love anymore. We’ve been liberated too much.”
While latest figures show that Britain’s teenage pregnancy rate has fallen since 2004, it remains the highest in Europe – at 19.7 per 1,000 girls and women aged 15 to 19. More than one million women in Britain take the Pill.
As she prepares to rejoin the Bibo fashion chain, which she founded 50 years ago to cater to such personalities as Marlene Dietrich and Mick Jagger, Ms Hulanicki also took aim at Britian’s high cost of childcare for working mothers.
Describing Biba’s practice early on of providing a room with a nanny for women employees to bring their babies, Ms Hulanicki expressed bemusement at the apparent unwillingness of modern companies to follow suit.
“Now at these huge firms the women spend all their money on looking after the kids. I don’t understand why that sort of thing hasn’t caught on. It’s so easy. You know they’re happy and you’re not anxious and rushing back home.”