Linda Jackson and Jenny Kee

An awareness of the peculiar nature of the Australian landscape and of its flora and fauna has always been a feature of Australian art. At various times this awareness has assumed greater importance, and during those periods — which have usually coincided with national celebrations such as the 1888 centenary of the arrival of the First Fleet — some of the most individual and original Australian decorative arts have been created. Australia witnessed another period of heightened national awareness at the time ot the bicentennial celebrations of Captain Cook's 1770 landfall in eastern Australia. In more recent times, preparations for the 1988 celebrations of the bicentennial of settlement have contributed to a continued interest in peculiarly Australian culture and motifs that developed from the early 1970s.

On 27 August 1973 Jenny Kee opened Flamingo Park in the Strand Arcade, Sydney. The shop, named after a painting by Michael Ramsden, Jenny Kee's husband, had turquoise walls and shocking pink carpet, and prominently featured a notice inviting the visitor to 'Step into Paradise'. A new era of Australian fashion had begun.

Jennifer Margaret Kee was born in Sydney on 24 January 1947 and studied dress design at East Sydney Technical College for eighteen months until 1964. In 1965 she went to London, and from 1967 to 1972 worked with Vern Lambert at the Chelsea Antique Market, London, selling 'retro' clothing and vintage couture. Jenny Kee returned to Australia in December 1972. Just before opening her shop, she met the designer Linda Jackson, who was showing her clothes on Paul Craft's Paraphernalia stand at the Bonython Gallery's Winter Fair in Sydney. These brilliantly coloured and extravagantly cut garments so impressed Jenny Kee that when Flamingo Park opened it stocked a selection of clothes designed by Linda Jackson. The friendship and business partnership that subsequently developed between Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson became central to the style of the shop.

Linda Mary Jackson was born on 15 September 1950 in Melbourne. She studied fashion design at the Emily McPherson College from 1966 to 1967, and photography at the Prahran Technical College during 1968. In 1969, accompanied by the photographer Fran Moore (born 1947) and the jeweller Peter Tully (born 1947), she travelled to New Guinea, where she stayed for nine months before travelling through Asia to Europe. She spent six months in Paris, making clothes for the Parisian designers Mia and Vicki, and in 1973 returned to Australia, where, after her meeting with Jenny Kee, she established her own business in Sydney making clothes for Flamingo Park.

Both Linda Jackson and Jenny Kee consciously reject current fashion trends and seek their inspiration in the art of the past. Sources as diverse as the early twentieth century artists Piet Mondrian, Henri Matisse, Fernand Leger and Sonia Delaunay, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, and the work of the couturiers Paul Poiret, Madeleine Vionnet and Elsa Schiaparelli have all provided ideas for Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson’s new and innovative fashion.

In 1974 Jenny Kee’s knitted garments carried specifically Australian motifs for the first time. Cardigans featuring ‘Blinky’ (Bill), the koala made famous in Dorothy Wall’s Blinky Bill stories, were followed by another ‘Koala’, a ‘Kooka’, and a ‘Kanga’. Since then Flamingo Park’s fashions have had a distinctively Australian style, incorporating Australian motifs and colours in a wide range of clothes and accessories.

‘The wattle’ dress of 1977 was one of the most popular Jenny Kee’s knitted designs. Linda Jackson’s work of the same year included the ‘Scribbly gum’ dress and her flower series, of which ‘Rose’, later to be known as ‘Rose waratah’, gave indications of the designer’s skill in creating new and innovative forms.

Both Linda Jackson and Jenny Kee have been aware of and open to other design talents. Flamingo Park has shown the work of jewellers such as Peter Tully, Rolley Clarke (born 1953), and the English jeweller Andrew Logan, who in 1980 designed a series incorporating opal amidst shards of mirror. Garments decorated by David McDiarmid (born 1952) and Bruce Goold (born 1948) have also been park of Flamingo Park’s image. Linda Jackson and Jenny Kee have both used David McDiarmid’s painted textiles, the painted and dyed silks of Deborah Leser (born 1954), and the fabrics produced by the Tiwi Designs, Bathurst Island, Northern Territory (established 1969) and the Utopia Women’s Batik Workshop, Utopia, Northern Territory (established c.1978). The enthusiasm of both designers for the vitality of Aboriginal art has encouraged them to look for inspiration in that ancient culture, and to seek and encourage work suitable for use in their own clothing.

Jenny Kee’s many-layered outfit ‘Petroglyph’ takes its name from the fabric screenprinted with her design inspired by Aboriginal rock carvings and paintings. The poncho, top and skirt over trousers, however, were influenced by sources as diverse as the costume of South America and Greece. Similarly the ‘Universal opal Oz’ outfit, made from examples of many of Jenny Kee’s designs for printed silk, incorporates elements of other costumes. Most notably, the pubic cover can be seen to have been inspired by the dress of various tribal peoples, and the collar suggests the court costume of Manchurian China. Linda Jackson’s ‘Desert’ fabric, in some ways more typically ‘Australian’, makes use of the brilliant colours of the Central Australian landscape over which a sunburst/gum leaf motif has been superimposed. The fabric of Linda Jackson’s ‘Black rainbow opal’ outfit is inspired by the beauty of this gemstone, but the use of fluorescent colours serves to remind us also of many aspects of contemporary city life.

Jenny Kee’s special interest in exotic textiles has led her to use and incorporate many of these textiles into her ensembles. Brilliantly coloured handwoven textiles from South America have always been a feature of Flamingo Park, and Jenny Kee frequently uses them to belt her garments. Laotian, Indonesian (especially ikat), and African textiles have also been used. African Mali cloth, which Jenny Kee first used in 1982, inspired one of her most successful fabric designs, ‘Mali Oz’, which amidst its apparently non-objective pattern incorporates a stylized map of Australia, the designer’s signature and the slang word ‘Oz’.

Jenny Kee first began designing textiles in the late 1970s, and black and white designs have been an important part of her work. However, it was her discovery, with Linda Jackson, of the great beauty of the opal that resulted in the series of opal fabrics which the international couturier Karl Lagerfeld used in 1982 for a range of garments for the Paris fashion house, Chanel. Chanel has also used Jenny Kee’s ‘Mali Oz’ fabric.

Jenny Kee’s enthusiasm and her ability to work in many different areas of design has even led her to have a series of floor rugs made from her designs. These rugs were produced in 1983 in Guano Village in Ecuador, South America. Since 1983 Jenny Kee has also had several fabric designs, most notably ‘Black opal’ and ‘Mali Oz’, executed in glass beads and sequins. The necessary work has been carried out in India.

In 1974, Linda Jackson and Jenny Kee held their first fashion parade at the Hingara, a Chinese restaurant in Sydney. In the following years, the Bondi Pavilion (1975), Le Café (1976), the Strand Arcade (1977), the Queen Street Galleries (1978), the Seymour Centre (1979), the Sydney Town Hall (1980), and the Jamieson Street Night Club (1981) were the venues for these spectacular theatrical productions, which became an annual highpoint for the Australian fashion world.

In the early 1980s Linda Jackson, too, became increasingly involved with the textile production. Her fabrics and the fabris of those she inspired have helped revitalize the art of painted, printed and dyed textiles in Australia. At the same time her interests in designing and making silver and opal jewellery began to develop. As these enthusiasms played a greater part in her activities, her work began to diverge significantly from that of her partner Jenny Kee, and Linda Jackson stepped out on her own. In June 1982, her shop Bush Couture – Australia's answer to haute couture – opened in William Street, Sydney. At first a screenprinting workshop was maintained in nearby Darlinghurst, Sydney, but was later moved to the large William Street premises.

The tradition of holding fashion parades has been maintained by Linda Jackson, whose Black Magic collection was launched at Bush Couture in September 1982. In 1983 the Bush Couture collection was presented to the public, followed, in 1984, by the Bush Blossoms range.

Linda Jackson and Fran Moore's mutual interest in photography has resulted in an enthusiasm for taking fashion photographs close to the source of inspiration for the individual garment. Much of the earliest work inspired by Australian flora has been photographed in the bush. Linda Jackson's more recent fashion and fabrics, inspired by the outback, have been photographed at Central Australian locations. One of the greatest fashion photographs of our time is Mike Molloy's (born 1940) image of six models, Aboriginal and white Australians, with brilliantly painted faces. The models, who are posed in the bush, wear a fabulous assortment of Jenny Kee fabrics and garments, and Aboriginal, New Guinean, African and South American decorations. (This photograph is included in The Great Aussie Fashion Book, published in 1984.)

Never afraid to make the koala into an heroic figure, nor to sing the praises of a sunburnt country, Linda Jackson and Jenny Kee have sought inspiration from all that is best in Australia. Their designs have celebrated not only the country’s landscape, flora, and fauna, but also its people — both aboriginal and emigrant— and their way of life. At Flamingo Park and Bush Couture, Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson have captured the imagination of people the world over. Their clothes have been featured in Italian, French, English and American fashion magazines. They have been leaders in the development of an Australian style in fashion, and important figures in the revival of interest in Australian culture.

John McPhee