Jenny Kee

Australian fashion designer and retailer of knitwear, textile and accessories, a celebrity artist and a conservationist.

Jenny Kee has been a pioneer in fashion design by using colors and designs of the Australian bush that, like her personality, are vibrant, bright and bold. She was born at Bondi Beach in Sydney in 1947 to a Cantonese businessman father and Italian/British mother: "My father is full Chinese, his family came out with the gold rushes in the 1850s. My mother is half Italian and half Anglo-Saxon, being Scottish, Irish and English. So you see I am a mixture, a full mixture. I am the original melting pot." At the local government school she wasn't afraid to stand up to bullies. "I did have a problem with racist taunts when I was young, but it made me sort of tougher. I will stand up to anyone and I'm proud of who I am. I feel it was having the combination of those different cultures is what really made me ... so vivacious."

In 1963 Kee began studying fashion design in Sydney, but was not allowed to design the colourful clothes she wanted. "They would say to me -- you can't design what you're wearing." Considering Australia "a very, very bland place," she traveled to swinging London in 1965. After working with Vernon Lambert at his Chelsea Antique Market selling vintage couture from 1967, Kee returned to Sydney in 1972 full of creative ideas, and opened the boutique, Flamingo Park Frock Salon, 1973-94. Joined in the enterprise by designer Linda Jackson, Kee established a signature label "Jenny Kee."

For a decade, the dynamic and innovative partners made exciting use of Australian flora and fauna in their characteristically colorful designs. The sign above the shop door reads "Welcome to Paradise." Kee's uniquely-Australian, hand-knitted, pure Aussie wool jumpers (sweaters) appeared in 1974.