A MOMENTOUS fashion movement making its way through the 1970s and just into the ’80s, centred around Sydney’s Flamingo Park Frock Salon, was the subject of ArtsNational Coffs Coast’s June presentation.
It was the shop’s founding era, and the designers who forged it, which speaker Dr Sally Gray presented to the audience at St John Paul College Theatre.
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‘Friends, Fashion and Fabulousness’, the title of Dr Sally Gray’s book about this important moment in Australia’s cultural history, was cited throughout the presentation.
It’s hard to overstate the significance of the Flamingo Park Frock Salon to Sydney’s creative life in the 1970s and early 1980s.
Founded by art and fashion designer Jenny Kee, in partnership with dressmaker extraordinaire Linda Jackson, Flamingo Park was a sensation.
Kee and Jackson worked together between 1974 and 1982.
Their creative chemistry enabled a broader cohort of rebellious and talented friends to challenge convention and produce something entirely new.
An active participant in the group of friends and a recognised curator and cultural historian in her own right, Dr Gray described to an audience of 130 how this golden moment in Sydney’s cultural history was fuelled by boldness, irreverence and friendship.
The interlocking histories of four creative friends, in particular, revealed how intensely collaborative Flamingo Park and its accompanying ‘Flamingo Follies Fashion Parades’ were in practice.
The originality of Kee and Jackson’s fashion output was complemented by artist David McDiarmid’s hand-painted fabrics, and Peter Tully’s ironic and highly collectable jewellery.
Using images from her own archive, alongside the photographic legacy created by social photographer William Yang, the audience was reminded of the exuberant hot pink and midnight blue colour scheme of the Flamingo Park shop in Sydney’s Strand Arcade.
With its life size flamingo ornaments, Chinese-inspired motifs and kitsch market finds, Flamingo Park’s exhortation to ‘Step Into Paradise’ must have been an enticing invitation.
Kee’s retail nous and bold eye for the new and striking, and Jackson’s skill as a pattern maker and dressmaker were an indispensable factor in its success.
Interweaving politics, craft, jewellery, and reimagined Australian motifs into a new urban aesthetic, McDiarmid and Tully helped turn the shop’s Flamingo Follies Fashion Parades into legendary events.
The shop and the parades were a magnet for the famous, adventurous and discerning.
Dr Gray’s talk generated lots of questions and memories.
One audience member, Coffs Coast local Zenzi Rutter-Grace, shared how she once worked for Flamingo Park while a young fashion student in the late 1970s.
She confirmed how exciting the world swirling around Flamingo Park was at that time.
The last Flamingo Follies Fashion Parade was held in 1981.
The partnership between Jenny Kee and Linda Jackson ended in 1982, although they have always remained friends.
David McDiarmid and Peter Tully both died of AIDS-related illnesses in the early 1990s.
“Together they created a fresh visual language through exquisite fashion and inventive performance art,” concluded Dr Gray.
“And this ‘golden moment’ reminds us of the originality of our own creative and cultural history.”
ArtsNational Coffs Coast’s July 22 talk will focus on ‘The Architecture of Mughal India: Palaces, Mosques, Gardens and Mausoleums’ with Dr John Stevens.
More information is available at www.artsnationalcoffscoast.au.
By Andrea FERRARI
