Yeohlee Teng is an American

fashion Fashion is a term used interchangeably to describe the creation of clothing, footwear, Fashion accessory, accessories, cosmetics, and jewellery of different cultural aesthetics and their mix and match into Clothing, outfits that depict distinct ...

designer A designer is a person who plans the form or structure of something before it is made, by preparing drawings or plans. In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, products, processes, laws, games, graphics, services, or exper ...

originally from

Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...

and of

Chinese Chinese may refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people identified with China, through nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **Han Chinese, East Asian ethnic group native to China. **'' Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic ...

heritage. She received the Smithsonian's

Cooper-Hewitt Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is a design museum at the Andrew Carnegie Mansion in Manhattan, New York City, along the Upper East Side's Museum Mile. It is one of 19 Smithsonian Institution museums and one of three Smithsonian facili ...

National Design Award The American National Design Awards, founded in 2000, are various awards funded and bestowed by the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. There are seven official design categories, and three additional awards when applicable. Any supplement ...

for fashion design in 2004. Her work has been displayed at the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

and Victoria & Albert,

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

Education

She hails from

Penang Penang is a Malaysian state located on the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia along the Strait of Malacca. It has two parts: Penang Island, where the capital city, George Town, is located, and Seberang Perai on the Malay Peninsula. Th ...

where she attended

St. George's Girls' School St. George's Girls' School is an all-girls secondary school in George Town, Penang, Malaysia. Originally established in 1885, it is notable for its academic achievements and notable alumnae from different racial, ethnic and cultural backgrounds ...

. She moved to New York in the 1970s to study fashion at the

Parsons School of Design The Parsons School of Design is a private art and design college under The New School located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhattan art ...

. She has worked primarily in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

and established her own house, YEOHLEE inc in 1981.

Work

Yeohlee practices sustainable and universal design. She uses zero waste methods to create multi-functional garments. Yeohlee believes that "clothes have magic." She dresses the "urban nomad", a term she coined for her Fall 1997 collection, defining a lifestyle that requires clothing that works on a variety of practical and psychological levels. She is a master of design management and believes in the efficiency of year-round, seasonless clothes. Andrew Bolton, curator of the

Costume Institute The Anna Wintour Costume Center is a wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art The Met Fifth Avenue, main building in Manhattan that houses the collection of the Costume Institute, a curatorial department of the museum focused on fashion and costume ...

of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, stated that Yeohlee shares the vision of the Victoria and Albert Museum founders to both promote and further the use of newly developed processes within the field. On her views on decoration, Bolton stated that Yeohlee views ornament as intrinsic to their construction and as acceptable only when justified by construction, lending her dresses distinction and refinement while empowering the wearer and facilitating movement. Yeohlee published ''YEOHLEE: WORK'' in 2003, which surveys the 20 years of her practice with essays by prominent fashion, art and design curators and critics. Yeohlee spearheaded the Made in Midtown project as General Secretary on the board of the

Council of Fashion Designers of America The Council of Fashion Designers of America, Inc. (CFDA), founded in 1962 by publicist Eleanor Lambert, and headquartered in Manhattan, is a not-for-profit trade association comprising a membership of over 450 American fashion and accessor ...

and in partnership with the Design Trust for Public Space and Making Midtown YEOHLEE’s collections are designed, developed and produced in New York’s Garment District. Today the store and workroom is located at 12 West 29th Street in the

NoMad Nomads are communities without fixed habitation who regularly move to and from areas. Such groups include hunter-gatherers, pastoral nomads (owning livestock), tinkers and trader nomads. In the twentieth century, the population of nomadic pa ...

Flatiron District The Flatiron District is a neighborhood in the borough (New York City), borough of Manhattan of New York City, named after the Flatiron Building at 23rd Street (Manhattan), 23rd Street, Broadway (Manhattan), Broadway and Fifth Avenue. Generally ...

. Yeohlee Teng is on the board of the

Municipal Art Society of New York The Municipal Art Society of New York (MAS) is a non-profit membership organization for preservation in New York City, which aims to encourage thoughtful planning and urban design and inclusive neighborhoods across the city. The organization was ...

Exhibitions

Her clothing designs have been creative and unusual right from the beginning of her career in the early 1980s. She believes that clothing is an intimate form of architecture. She has established her name for strong geometric designs and concise functualism. Exhibitions of her designs have been held for more than 40 years now. Yeohlee's work, often described as "architectural," attracted the attention of critics and professionals in other fields of design. To an extent unusual for fashion designers, her clothes were exhibited as design art in many museums and galleries in the 1990s and early 2000s. Her participation in the group show Intimate Architecture: Contemporary Clothing Design, presented at the Hayden Gallery at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

in 1982, won a great deal of favorable attention for her work and was an important factor in the early success of her company. Quoted in the New York Times, designer

Issey Miyake was a Japanese fashion designer. He was known for his technology-driven clothing designs, exhibitions and fragrances, such as '' L'eau d'Issey'', which became his best-known product. Early life and education Miyake was born on 22 April 1938 i ...

said Yeohlee's exhibit "proves that fashion no longer has to be separated from the other design fields. At its best, it is considerably more than a craft. It must represent its time. That M.I.T. has staged this show validates fashion and may inspire students here not to become electrical engineers but engineers of fashion.''
ultracontemporary

Phoenix Art Museum The Phoenix Art Museum is the largest art museum, museum for visual art in the southwest United States. Located in Phoenix, Arizona, the museum is . It displays international exhibitions alongside its comprehensive collection of more than 18,0 ...

, October 27, 2018 - March 24, 2019
Fashion Unraveled
The Museum at FIT, May 25, 2018 - November 17, 2018
YEOHLEE , SERRA
at Phoenix Art Museum, March 17, 2017 - May 29, 2017
Folk Couture: Fashion and Folk Art

American Folk Art Museum The American Folk Art Museum is an art museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, at 2 Lincoln Square, Columbus Avenue at 66th Street. It is the premier institution devoted to the aesthetic appreciation of folk art and creativ ...

, January 21, 2014 - April 23, 2014
Front Row: Chinese American Designers

Museum of Chinese in America The Museum of Chinese in America (; abbreviated MOCA) is a museum in New York City which exhibits Chinese American history. It is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) education and cultural institution that presents the living history, heritage, culture, and ...

, April 26, 2013 - December 1, 2013
IMPACT: 50 Years of the CFDA
The Museum at FIT, February 10, 2012 - April 17, 2012
Yield: Making Fashion Without Making Waste

The Dowse Art Museum The Dowse Art Museum is a municipal art gallery in Lower Hutt, New Zealand. Opening in 1971 in the Lower Hutt CBD, The Dowse occupies a stand-alone building adjacent to other municipal facilities. The building was completely remodelled in 2 ...

, New Zealand, March 26, 2011 - June 26, 2011
American Beauty: Aesthetics and Innovation in Fashion
The Museum at FIT, November 6, 2009 - April 10, 2010
YEOHLEE: Design For Now
Crow Collection of Asian Art, Dallas, TX, October 3, 2009 - January 3, 2010
Fashioning Felt

Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum is a design museum at the Andrew Carnegie Mansion in Manhattan, New York City, along the Upper East Side's Museum Mile. It is one of 19 Smithsonian Institution museums and one of three Smithsonian facili ...

, New York, NY, March 6 - September 7, 2009 *
Breaking the Mode: Contemporary Fashion from the permanent collection
', Los Angeles County Museum of Art, September 17, 2006 - January 7, 2007
blog.mode: addressing fashion
Costume Institute, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, December 18, 2007 - April 13, 2008
Exoticism
The Museum at FIT, New York, NY, November 27, 2007 - May 7, 2008
Contromoda
Centre for Contemporary Arts at

Palazzo Strozzi Palazzo Strozzi is a palace in Florence, Italy. It is located in the historic centre between the homonymous Via Strozzi and Piazza Strozzi, and Via Tornabuoni. History The construction of the palace was begun in 1489 by Benedetto da Maiano, ...

, Florence, Italy, October 12, 2007 - January 20, 2008 *Luxury, The Museum at FIT, New York, NY, May 23 - November 10, 2007
SKIN+BONES: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture

Somerset House Somerset House is a large neoclassical architecture, neoclassical building complex situated on the south side of the Strand, London, Strand in central London, overlooking the River Thames, just east of Waterloo Bridge. The Georgian era quadran ...

, London, April 24, 2008 - August 10, 2008,

, London, April 24, 2008 - August 10, 2008; The National Art Center, Tokyo, June 6, 2007 - August 13, 2007; Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, November 19, 2006 - March 5, 2007 *THE FASHION OF ARCHITECTURE: Constructing the Architecture of Fashion, Center for Architecture, New York NY, January 11, 2006 - March 11, 2006 *The New China Chic, Festival of China, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, DC, October 2005 *YEOHLEE: SUPERMORDERN STYLE, The Museum at FIT, New York, NY, October 23, 2001 - January 5, 2002
YEOHLEE: Fashion in Motion
Victoria & Albert Museum, London, October 30 - December 4, 2000 *The Super Modern Wardrobe,

London College of Fashion The London College of Fashion is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, a public art university in London, England. The college offers undergraduate and postgraduate study, short courses, study-abroad courses and business t ...

, London, November 2 - December 6, 2000 *Mutations//Mode 1960:2000,

Palais Galliera The Palais Galliera, also formally known as the Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris (City of Paris Fashion Museum), and formerly known as Musée Galliera, is a museum of fashion and fashion history located at 10, avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie, ...

, Paris, March 30 - July 31, 2000
China Chic: East Meets West
The Museum at FIT, New York, NY, February 16 - April 24, 1999 *Energetics: Clothes and Enclosures,

Aedes ''Aedes'' (also known as the tiger mosquito) is a genus of mosquitoes originally found in tropical and subtropical zones, but now found on all continents except Antarctica. Some species have been spread by human activity: ''Aedes albopictus'', ...

East Gallery, Berlin, May 22 - June 19, 1998 and the

Netherlands Architecture Institute The Netherlands Architecture Institute (NAI) was a cultural institute for architecture and urban development, which comprised a museum, an archive plus library and a platform for lectures and debates. The NAI was established in 1988 and was ba ...

, Rotterdam, August 1 - September 6, 1999
Cubism and Fashion
Costume Institute, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, December 10, 1998 - March 14, 1999 *The New Couture,

Museum of the City of New York The Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) is a history and art museum in Manhattan, New York City, New York. It was founded by Henry Collins Brown, in 1923Beard, Rick. "Museum of the City of New York" in to preserve and present the history ...

, New York, NY, November 20, 1984 - June 16, 1985 *Yeohlee Teng/ Fashion,

MoMA PS1 MoMA PS1 is a contemporary art institution at 2201 Jackson Avenue in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens in New York City, United States. In addition to its exhibitions, the institution organizes the Sunday Sessions performance series, th ...

, New York, NY, January 22 - March 18, 1984 *Intimate Architecture: Contemporary Clothing Design,

Hayden Gallery Established in 1950, the List Visual Arts Center (LVAC) is the contemporary art museum of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is known for temporary exhibitions in its galleries located in the MIT Media Lab building, as well as its admin ...

, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, May 15 - June 27, 1982

Press Coverage

* "Yeohlee Fall 2021

Ready-to-Wear Ready-to-wear (RTW)also called ''prêt-à-porter'', or off-the-rack or off-the-peg in casual useis the term for garments sold in finished condition in standardized sizes, as distinct from made-to-measure or bespoke clothing tailored to a partic ...

" - May 10, 2021
Vogue
*"Yeohlee RTW Fall 2021" - April 30, 2021
WWD
*"Amber Valletta & Fern Mallis Host Goodwill NYNJ Sustainable Fashion & COVID Fundraising Virtual Event 1/28" - January 28, 2021

* "Designers Pitching in With Goodwill NYNJ Virtual Event" - January 25, 2021
WWD
* "Jean Shafiroff: As You've Never Seen Her Before!" - November 6, 2020
Look Online
* "The Election Question: First Presidential Priority" - November 4, 2020
WWD
* "Yeohlee Spring 2021 Ready-to-Wear Collection" - October 7, 2020
Vogue.com
* "Yeohlee RTW Spring 2021" - September 30, 2020
WWD
* "10 Fashion Sustainability Initiatives to Know" - September 15, 2020
WWD
* "I LOVE NY: New York Fashion Moments From the Fairchild Archive"- September 14, 2020
WWD
* "The Asian-American Fashion Designers Who Shaped the Industry" - April 13, 2020

* "Yeohlee RTW Fall 2020" - February 13, 2020
WWD
* "Yeohlee RTW Spring 2020" - September 11, 2019
WWD
* "New York Spring 2020 Designer Inspirations: Part One" - September 4, 2019
WWD
* "Garment District Modernization Takes Step Closer to Fruition" - August 21, 2019
WWD
* "What Should Tom Ford's Top Priorities Be at the CFDA?" - March 20, 2019
WWD
* "Yeohlee RTW Fall 2019" - February 1, 2019
WWD
* "What Is the Current State of American Fashion?" - September 4, 2018
WWD
* "American Designer Yeohlee Teng on Why 'Clothes Have Magic'" - August 24, 2018
Luxury Daily
* "Yeohlee Resort 2019" - June 7, 2018
WWD
* "Where to Find Made in NYC Clothing and Accessories" - May 4, 2018
City Guide NY
* "The Fashion Industry Fights to Preserve Manhattan's Garment District" - May 2, 2017
Digiday
* "Phoenix Art Museum Unveils 'Yeohlee, Serra' Exhibition, Combining Fashion and Art" - March 17, 2017
WWD
* "Yeohlee, CF Goldman Display Versatile and Thoughtful Designs" - February 20, 2017
NY1
* "Yeohlee Teng to Team With Richard Serra for Phoenix Art Museum Installation" - February 14, 2017
WWD
* "Yeohlee Fall 2017 Runway" - February 14, 2017
The Fashion Spot
* "Anjelica Huston Wears Yeohlee at Vanity Fair Oscar Party" - February 28, 2016
WWD
* "New York Fashion Week Through the Years" - September 10, 2015
CHRON
* "A Studio Grounded in Her Beliefs" - September 22, 2010

* "Inside the Garment Center: Yeohlee Teng Takes Us to Regal Originals" - July 1, 2010
Fashionista
* "Needle and Thread Still Have a Home" - April 28, 2010

References

Sources

Chou, Jerome, ed. ''Making Midtown: A New Vision for a 21st Century Garment District in New York City''. Design Trust for Public Space, 2012. Khoo Salma Nasution, Alison Hayes & Sehra Yeap Zimbulis: ''Giving Our Best: The Story of St George's Girls' School, Penang, 1885-2010'', Areca Books, 2010. Major, John, ed. ''YEOHLEE : WORK''. Australia: The Images Publishing Group Pty Ltd, 2003. Sidlauskas, Susan, ''Intimate Architecture: Contemporary Clothing Design'', Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1982.

External links

* Official site

* * New York Times article

* Merge magazine profile

* The Laws of Style podcast hosted by Douglas Hand, March 27, 2019

National Endowment for the Arts podcast, July 12, 2012

Vogue Italia success stories

Interview with David Rosen
{{DEFAULTSORT:Yeohlee, Teng American fashion designers of Chinese descent American fashion designers High fashion brands Living people People from Penang Malaysian emigrants to the United States Year of birth missing (living people)