When Jenny Kee arrived at the Bonython Gallery in Sydney one morning in 1973, she wasn't expecting her life to change. A friend had called insisting she meet a designer visiting from Melbourne. What Kee found instead was more than a new collaborator; it was the beginning of one of Australian fashion's most defining partnerships.
The attraction was instant. 'I walked in and saw all these amazing 50s and Hawaiian-print playsuits, gored skirts and bra tops,' Kee remembers of Linda Jackson's work. The pair became immediate friends and their meeting marked the beginning of an enduring partnership. What neither could have predicted was that this chance encounter would shape not just their own careers, but Australian fashion itself.
Kee had recently returned to Australia from London in December 1972. Just before opening her boutique, she met Jackson, who was showing her clothes at the Bonython Gallery's Winter Fair. These brilliantly coloured and extravagantly cut garments impressed Kee so much that when Flamingo Park opened, it stocked a selection of clothes designed by Jackson.
The two designers shared something rare: a mutual reverence for the natural world and a refusal to follow overseas trends. They shared a mutual love for the Australian environment and vintage clothing, and soon developed a distinct voice in fashion through their inventive garments and bold prints. Their creations were entirely their own, independent of the conventional marketplace and fashion trends.
In 1974, 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 had a distinctively Australian style, incorporating Australian motifs and colours in a wide range of clothes and accessories. One of those koala jumpers would eventually be worn by Princess Diana at a polo match, catapulting the designers into international recognition.
Located in Sydney's Strand Arcade, Flamingo Park was known for its impossibly colourful walls, retro frocks and '50s-inspired prints, serving as a cultural and fashion zenith that catapulted founders Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson to icon status. For the following decade Linda's fashions retailed in Flamingo Park and together they hosted regular Flamingo Follies fashion shows that combined their designs with music and performance.
Yet for all its vibrancy and success, the partnership was ultimately about something deeper. Kee and Jackson spent much of the 1970s and early 1980s immersing themselves in nature, going on long bushwalks in the Blue Mountains where Jackson photographed Kee modelling her designs. 'We were grounded in nature: that was our magic,' says Kee. 'When we were out walking together doing our meditative shoots it was nature that was guiding us and her beauty has never left us.'
In 1982, the pair went their separate ways professionally. 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. Yet Kee and Jackson's friendship continues today and both have found success in independent projects.
Fifty years after that first meeting, their work is experiencing a renaissance. In 2019-20 Jackson and Kee's work was the subject of a major survey exhibition, Linda Jackson and Jenny Kee: Step into paradise, at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney. Jackson and Kee's work has been influential on new generations of fashion designers, including Anna Plunkett and Luke Sales from Romance Was Born, who have devoted two fashion collections to the fashion design duo.
Their legacy wasn't just about fashion; it was about saying something unapologetic about what it meant to be Australian. In an era when most designers looked to Paris and Milan, Kee and Jackson looked to the Blue Mountains, the coast, and the bush. They turned nature into couture and proved that distinctive style didn't need to follow international conventions to be extraordinary.