Jenny Kee

Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson by Rebecca Evans

Excerpted from the Know My Name publication (2020).

Headscarf and sunhat clad, and framed by the iconic Bondi Beach, Australian designers Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson appear to have stepped out of the 1950s in their vintage‑inspired ensembles. Taken in 1975, this photograph by Annie Noon shows the designers wearing Jackson’s Tutti frutti and Love letters outfits, featuring 1950s fabrics and accessories. Although most Australians will be familiar with Kee and Jackson’s dazzling use of native flora, fauna and landmarks in their work, this photograph shows the early influence of mid‑century style on both designers. For over 50 years Kee and Jackson have shared a formidable partnership, founded in a common aesthetic and a desire to produce a distinctly Australian fashion vernacular.

Born and raised in Bondi, Kee trained in fashion design at East Sydney Technical College before moving to London in the 1960s, a mecca for culture, art and fashion. Soon after returning to Sydney in 1973 she met Jackson, a Melbournian who studied dressmaking, design and photography and had also recently returned from overseas. As creative collaborators, Jackson and Kee worked together from 1973–82. Kee ran the legendary Flamingo Park store in Sydney’s Strand Arcade between 1973 and 1995. As Kee says:

With Linda’s unusual clothes and other pieces I collected from London, it was really a mix … We had cushions, crocheted items, flamingos and reggae music blasting out of an apple green jukebox. It was very kitsch, but romantic. Six months later, in April 1974, my knits went into the store and I have never looked back.(1)

In 1982 Kee and Jackson ended their formal partnership. Jackson embarked on a nomadic existence, collaborating with Indigenous Australian women artists at Utopia Station in the Northern Territory to produce textiles and garments that drew on their artistic traditions and landscape. She later recalled: ‘I loved watching the artists sitting around the fire, creating their batiks, marking their stories onto silk and cotton. The batik technique seemed to suit the heat and red dust of the desert … Meeting these women in their place made my heart sing!’(2)

Kee became known for her popular knitted jumpers in bright colours and patterns, including the infamous koala knit worn by Princess Diana. A quintessential Kee design is the 1980–85 Oz all ensemble, featuring a myriad of classic Australian references: lines drawn from Dorothea Mackellar’s famous 1908 poem My Country, the Sydney Opera House, Uluru and Sturt’s Desert Pea.(3) This work is a romp through Australiana imagery, fearlessly proclaimed in colour and form.

Since the early 1970s, both Kee and Jackson have paved extensive careers as artists and designers, individually and in collaboration with some of Australia’s brightest creatives. They are friends first and foremost and continue to play significant roles as mentors and supporters of local fashion and design industries. Their quest to create bold, unapologetic Australian contemporary design is their legacy and ongoing passion.

REBECCA EVANS is is Curator, Decorative Arts and Design, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.