Jenny Kee chants her big life

It was wonderful to have the opportunity to take my Jenny Kee "opal oz" shirt and poncho out for a cocktail last night. Those girls are so outlandish they can only be aired every now and again. I first bought them in the early 1980s from the legendary Flamingo Park store in the Strand Arcade and have worn them on and off ever since. Famously, Karl Lagerfeld was so enamoured of the print that he used it for lining a collection of Chanel suits. Last night, the occasion was the launch, at Sydney's Powerhouse Museum, of Jenny Kee's autobiography, A Big Life, splendidly published by Lantern. Soul sister Linda Jackson, who flew down from Cairns for the night, gave the official speech. A beauteous Jenny, wearing black and white (Yohji mixed with Flamingo Park she told me) with her trademark bright red lips, gave an elegant speech that had some in the crowd in tears. Then she blessed us with a Buddhist chant, singing the mantra she had woven into her latest piece, Transformer: Waratah Warrior Walking the Sacred Path, designed in collaboration with Masahiro Nakagawa and constructed from the old teeshirts of her late lover Danton Hughes. A few Flamingo Park pieces came out for the night, including scarves worn by Alexandra Joel and Dasha Ross. If you looked down rather than up, you would haave spotted Nell Schofield's amazing shoes, which looked like plaster casts stuck onto wooden blocks (very approppriate given that the Chinese terracotta warriors guarding the room were wearing almost the same footwear.) The gang was all there - Richard Neville, Martin Sharp, Brett Hilder, Sue Smithers, Kylie Kwong, Mary Shackman, Ita Buttrose, Robert Adamson, Mark Joffe and Lydia Livingston, Fran Moore, Deborah Leser. Those who were originals in the 70s and 80s looked on with amusement at the dashing young man, generation 2001, who was wearing full New Romantic drag. So much nostalgia in one night! It was bliss.