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Australian designers, Eastern influence
Evolution and revolution: Chinese dress 1700s-1990s

Lisa Ho: costumes for the 2000 Olympic Games Opening ceremony
Lisa Ho is one of Australia's most popular fashion designers and manufacturers, best known for her beaded evening wear, comfortably cut jeans and more recently glamorous swimwear.

With a family background in tailoring and sewing, Lisa Ho knew at an early age that she wanted to create clothing. She studied dress design at East Sydney Technical College and established her eponymous label soon after graduation.

Lisa Ho was one of four fashion and costume designers approached to create original costumes for the Arrivals segment of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games opening ceremony. The designers were asked to express the rich cultural heritage that migrants from around the world have brought to Australia. Lisa Ho was given the Asia region and sought through her designs to explore the rich costume and textile traditions of the diversity of cultures in this area. Rather than taking the styles literally she has transformed them into a very evocative but contemporary manifestation.

For more information on Lisa Ho:
www.lisaho.com

Jenny Kee
Jenny Kee was born in Bondi in the late 1940s to a Cantonese father and Italian-British mother. She made her way to swinging London in the mid 1960s and made the most of the creative bohemian atmosphere, landing a job at the Chelsea Antique market where she sold and dressed herself in an eye catching mix of ethnic and retro clothes. On returning to Australia in the early 1970s she decided to set up the Flamingo Park frock salon in the Strand Arcade selling retro garments and the work of avant-garde Australian designers including Linda Jackson and Peter Tully.

Jenny also began to create her own unique knitwear and printed cotton and silk garments. Her work drew not only on her love of Australia's unique natural environment and in particular its cycles of death and regeneration, but also on the silhouettes and textiles of traditional Asian clothing. Overlaying this was a spiritual quest which drew on Asian religious philosophy and practice, in particular yoga, meditation and Buddhism.

Her work drew on her experience of living in the Blue Mountains in a home surrounded by native bushland which is frequently ravaged by fire. From the devastation she has watched the bush regenerate with a showing of green shoots, leaves and flowers even more spectacular after their ordeal. Her waratah and black boy fabric was inspired by this process, with the rich reds of the waratahs criss-crossed by the black stalks of the black boy (colloquial term used for any species of plant belonging to the genera Xanthorrhoea and Kingia - thought to resemble a native figure with a grass skirt holding a spear). Jenny used the colour red extensively in her work because of its connection to her Chinese background and because it was the colour of both fire and the waratah, a colour related to both destruction and regeneration.

Many of her silhouettes were inspired by Asian dress, she was primarily attracted to the comfort, ease and elegance afforded by styles such as the aoku with its pyjama style top and pants, the cheungsam, the kimono sleeve and mandarin collar.

Jenny Kee opal prin
Jenny Kee opal print, aoku inspired outfit. Courtesy: Jenny Kee. Powerhouse Museum Collection.

Waratah and black boys
Waratah and black boys inspired dressing gown, swimming costume and cheungsam (Powerhouse Museum, 1989: 5) Courtesy: Jenny Kee.

Linda Jackson
Linda Jackson is one of Australia's most significant designer-makers. In the early 1970s Jenny Kee opened the Flamingo Park frock salon and filled it with Linda Jackson's original garments, beginning a highly successful and influential collaboration which lasted ten years. Linda continued with her own design business Bush Couture and has more recently been designing furnishing fabrics for Australian resorts.

Linda Jackson's designs are closely linked to oriental and tribal dress, and an integration of art, life and environment. An interest in Buddhism and travels in Asia led to the collecting of exotic textiles and Chinese Opera costumes.

Drapes and patchwork inspired from Monk's robes, the intricate layering and decoration combined with the flat shapes of the Opera costumes inspired a unique translation of Chinese dress - the flat shape becoming the canvas for a poetic vision of Australian symbols.

In Kuala Lumpur, I met a Chinese family, one of whom had been an opera singer in Shanghai during the twenties and thirties. All her costumes were lovingly preserved in a trunk. Most of them were traditional in shape; there were skirts that were flat in the front and pleated up the side, small bodice tops, and wide, flat coats and jackets with big sleeves. Enormous care had gone into decorating them. Some were embroidered in gold thread on the collar and sleeves, some glittered with sequins, others were encrusted with small coloured beads. All, of course, were handmade. They were absolutely beautiful. (Jackson, 1987: 135)

1920s Chinese opera costumes
1920s Chinese opera costumes from Shanghai, with Chinese stage curtain backdrop. (Jackson, 1987: 134) Photo by: Linda Jackson. Courtesy: Linda Jackson. Powerhouse Museum Collection.

The strongest examples of where Chinese dress has influenced Linda Jackson's designs can be seen in the following garments:

Black Banksia (1986) was inspired by opera costumes that feature several pieces that are layered and tied individually onto the wearer's body.

Black banksia
Black banksia, 1986. (Jackson, 1987: 91) Photo by: Linda Jackson. Courtesy: Linda Jackson. Powerhouse Museum Collection.

Wildflowers applique (1976) features the flat Chinese top shape decorated with wildflowers.

Wildflowers applique
Wildflowers applique, 1976. Cotton applique Chinese top and dirndl skirt, featuring anthuriums, gum blossom, Sturt's desert pea and birds of paradise. Matching headscarf in batik. Collection of the Australian National Gallery, Canberra. Photo by: Linda Jackson. Courtesy: Linda Jackson.

Abstract Patchwork (1977) features flat Chinese top shape and collar. The large flat Chinese shape is cut out, then squares and strips of coloured cotton are arranged as a painting, then stitched together, the original shape becomes the lining.

Abstract Patchwork
Abstract Patchwork, 1977. (Jackson, 1987: 36) Photo by: Linda Jackson.
Courtesy: Linda Jackson.

The circular top of The Black and White Disc (1979) was inspired by women's under layers.

The Black and White Disc
The Black and White Disc, 1979. The art of the disc, spheres cut and appliqued onto each other to create a circle top. (Jackson, 1987: 34) Photo by: Linda Jackson. Courtesy: Linda Jackson.


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