Every item that Sarah Jane Adams wears tells a story.

The 62 year old’s oxblood red leather biker jacket – “her Michael Jackson jacket”, she jokes – is an ’80s piece she picked up at Glebe markets last year from a girl who was selling her mum’s clothes.

“I would not have worn this back in the day, I was a hardcore punk-hippy so this would have been far too mainstream for me,” she says.

Her patchwork white jeans are the custom-made creation of a talented designer friend Hamid Holloman, recycled from drop sheets and flour sacks.

She’s had her “sensible, doing it all, kick-ass” cherry red boots since she was in her early twenties and her 1920’s scarf tied expertly around her neck, which is “completely falling to pieces”, was found in a trunk in an abandoned garage in Sheffield, Yorkshire when she was about 25 years old.

On her left hand is a custom-made 18 carat gold ring that spells her name across several fingers. It’s a token she wears “to keep me cool, keep me company, keep me safe” with “symbolic” detail on the underside which she prefers not to explain because “it’s personal”.

Of course, that only prompts more questions and curiosities.

A familiar sight in her home of 40 years, Sydney’s Newtown, English-born Adams is the kind of person you would double take at if she passed you down the street.

On anyone else her ensembles would look haphazard or messy, but on her the eclectic jigsaw pieces make perfect sense.

It’s this unique sense of style that has catapulted Adams to become something of an Instagram celebrity with over 150,000 followers, after one of her daughters reposted a picture Adams’ husband had taken of her wearing a red Adidas jacket three years ago.

Adding the hashtags #AdvancedStyle and #MyMumIsCoolerThanMe, the image caught the attention of Advanced Style blogger, founder and photographer Ari Seth Cohen who happened to be in town promoting his book.

“He saw the picture and came over to shoot the outfit again and posted it in on his blog and I got 5,000 followers from that and that was basically the beginning,” she tells me.

Now the 62 year old is represented worldwide by prestigious modelling agency IMG, regularly snapped by street style photographers and sought after by brands.

While grateful for her following, Adams says followers isn’t something that drives her.

“If you scroll through Instagram, my first pictures are just jewellery and talking about folklore which is what I’m going to go back to doing more of because I’m so bored of myself on Instagram,” she says.

“I know I’m going to lose numbers but actually I don’t really mind, to me [what I post] has got to have integrity.”

An antique jewellery dealer-turned-designer by trade, Adams has been a collector of things since she was seven years old.

“When I was young, I had a shoebox with ‘Old things’ written on it and I used to dig up old bits of clay pipe and pottery and amulets and things and that’s how I started in this life,” she says.

That doesn’t translate into endless shopping though.

“I never go to shops and buy clothes. Actually I do, I lie, I mean I have to buy knickers. Back in the day I used to wear [UK brand] Marks and Spencer’s passion killers. Now I tend to wear Bonds passion killers. Always pure cotton underwear,” she says.

“For the rest of my things, sometimes I do feel like I look like a sad old hippie so I have to do things occasionally to jazz things up a bit, so every city I go to Adidas is the one store I go to but only if I need a different coloured tracksuit, I live in them… and the designers who they collaborate with, that’s what inspires me.”