IN THE basement of the Powerhouse Museum, the fashion designer children.
When she comes to a garment she designed as a homage to her late lover, the sculptor Danton Hughes, she grows excited.
And once Kee grows excited, you get the feeling it's impossible to stem the flow.
"I wanted to create something that was rare in spirit, like him," she says, her hands drawing scrolls in the air.
"This is transformation. My lama's there, my mantra is infused into the petals in the dress, and there's the symbolic bow of compassion shooting the arrows of wisdom. It's called Transformer: White Waratah Warrior Walking the Sacred Path, she says, emphasising every word in case I miss one.
Today the fashion is merely a sideshow. We're here because Kee's autobiography, A Big Life, is released this week. In 410 pages, the birdlike designer picks an energetic path through her childhood in Bondi and her teenage years in Sydney, where she famously slept with John Lennon.
She captures the sizzle of '60s London, where she hung out with Jimi Hendrix and Mick Jagger, her return to Sydney with her husband, artist Michael Ramsden, and the establishment of her boutique, Flamingo Park. Finally, she details her love affair with Danton Hughes, the son of art critic Robert Hughes and Kee's friend Danne, which ended with Danton's suicide in 2001. In her book, Kee calls him "the love of my life.
He was rare like the white waratah."
Although she'll be 60 in January, Kee is still daintily pretty and fiercely intense. Her lips are a gash of red and she sprinkles unwaveringly at you through her cat's-eyes glasses.
Richard Neville, the former editor of the satirical Oz magazine, is a friend and former lover of Kee's. He describes her as ebullient, passionate and original. "A force of nature.
Aberrant and unpredictable."
Her book reads that way, too: lively, swerving from topic to topic and populated by a shifting parade of bohemians. Kee talks her junior.
played like two kids," she writes. "I knew that made him happy, and lit up."
21-year marriage to Ramsden.
The lovers' age difference and the fact that Kee had nursed Danton as a baby, made the liaison controversial. Adding to the controversy was the prominence of the Hughes clan, which includes Robert, Tom Hughes, QC, and the former Since Danton's death, relations between Kee and Robert Hughes have been strained. Kee has described the relationship between "They could both be critical, judgemental men.
" For his part, closer.
"I don't have any relationship with Bob, but I feel for him," she says. "He was Danton's father, the father of the person I loved .
.. I feel for that man, darling, because he suffers from depression.
He's an angry man and he's a bitter man ...
I can't hate Bob. He can hate me, but I can't hate him."
Kee's book generally celebrates the freewheeling '60s, which puts her at odds with Hughes.
In an extract published in the free love in the '60s. Conservative columnists took up the mantra, criticising the effect of the decade on its children. Kee just shakes her head.
left at 26," she says. "People can just talk about the sex, drugs and rock'n'roll, but listen darl, there was much more. I had a few incredible years in London with people like Anna Wintour, Michael Roberts, Manolo Blahnik - people that were just so incredibly inspired, it was a time of inspiration.
I can only say how excited husband. We were living on high, and it wasn't drugs that got us going. They can write that, darling, but this was an incredible explosion, a renaissance.
Look at the music! Has anyone done music better now?"
Kee was an unapologetic groupie during the '60s.
"If you're going to be a groupie, well, I only had four and I went to the top ...
" she says, listing her rock'n'roll conquests as Lennon, Eric Clapton, Keith Richards and Roger Daltrey.
"I stopped there. No more.
I was a groupie for two years and it was wonderful. And I did it well!"
Although the tape is still running, time has run out.
Kee stands, aware of the crush of interviews to come.
"Well, sweetie, I hope you do a nice story," she says.
I'm rising, too, when suddenly Kee bends over me like a shaman, her dark eyes gleaming.
"We have to do some more positive stories to give us hope," she whispers. "We can't live in the dark. Everyone is living in the dark.
"
moment, then she cracks a smile.
"Got enough?" she asks.
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