By KERRY-ANNE COUSINS

Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson provided a welcome burst of cool fashion and colour on a bleak winter day in Canberra.

Two of Australia’s best known fashion icons were at the National Gallery of Australia on Wednesday to celebrate a special acquisition of 80 fashion items from Kee and Jackson’s personal archives. Among the collection are items donated by the pair.

This wonderful acquisition will be the largest collection of work by both of these fashion designers held in a public institution and will provide a great future resource. The collection contains early iconic designs by both artists featuring Australian flora and fauna, hand-painted silks, and knitwear from Kee’s 1976 art knitwear series Artiste and work she has designed from the late 1960s to the early 2000s.

Kee and Jackson’s creative journey together began when they met in the 1970s when Jackson started selling her designs through Kee’s frock salon Flamingo Park in the Strand Arcade in Sydney. (Both Kee and Jackson insisted Flamingo Park be called a frock salon). It was named after a painting by her husband Michael Ramsden.

They found they shared many creative ideas for fashion and an artistic passion for international artist Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979) who worked across printmaking, textiles, fashion and costume design. Delaunay was a member of the School of Paris and a co-founder of the Orphism art movement whose members were noted for their use of geometric abstraction and bright clear colours.

Both designers initially found inspiration abroad – Kee in the Chelsea fashion scene in London and Jackson in South East Asia, PNG and Europe. On returning home they were both drawn to the flora and fauna of Australia and presented it in their fashion collections in innovative and colourful designs. Who can forget the iconic Koala Bear jumper worn by Princess Diana in 1982?

As part of the Know My Name project at the National Gallery that honours women artists, there is a select exhibition of fashion by Kee and Jackson as well as works by Delaunay.  There is a promise of more to come in November.

When I was there recently, a visitor to the gallery was posing for a photograph in front of a Jenny Kee design, wearing her own Jenny Kee original jumper. Lucky her!