Yeohlee Teng was born in Malaysia in 1955 of Chinese parentage. She came to the United States in the 1970's and studied at Parsons School of Fashion, New York.
Her clothing designs have been creative and unusual right from the beginning of her career in the early 1980's. She believes that clothing is an intimate form of architecture. She has established her name for strong geometric designs and concise functualism.
Her work has been praised by the art world, and her designs have been exhibited in many museums worldwide for more than 20 years now.
Show Full
One of the first was in 1982, Intimate Architecture: Contemporary Clothing Design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
In 1984 the Institute for Art and Urban Resources held an exhibition called Yeohlee Teng - Fashion.
1985 saw "The New Couture" at the Museum of the City of New York, and "Energetics: Clothes and Enclosures" was held in 199 in Berlin, Germany.
The Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, has held two of Yeohlee's exhibitions, China Chic : East Meets West in 1999 and Yeohlee : Supermodern Style in 2001. The Metropolitan Museum in New York included her work in their exhibition "Cubism and Fashion" in March 1999.
In England, two exhibitions were held in 2000. One was at the London College of Fashion called "The Super Modern Wardrobe" and the other at the Victoria and Albert Museum, called "Yeohlee".
Paris has also exhibited her work, in 2000, included in an exhibition called Mutations : Mode 1960-2000.
New York has had the pleasure of seeing her clothes on the runway for many years now.
In 2003, she published her first book, Yeohlee: Work, a survey of her designs spanning the past 20 years and including essays by prominent fashion, art and design critics and curators. She received the Smithsonian's Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Fashion Design in 2004.
