This year marks 40 years in business for Yeohlee Teng who will receive the Board of Directors’ Tribute at the CFDA Awards next week. To look back at the designer’s work is to realize how ahead of the curve she has always been. From day one Teng has been focused on zero waste, one-size-fits-all, and genderless design, issues that have only recently become the industry’s cris de coeur.
Born in Malaysia in 1951, Teng came to New York to study at Parsons School of Design, trading one island for another, as it were. She found success out of the box, with an ingenious, ascetic-looking zero-waste cape that made retailers and copyists take notice, not to mention curators, who are often drawn to the architectural aspects of her work.
“I think of clothing as the first shelter that you build around yourself,” the designer says. A recipient of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award, Teng is a darling of the art world. Not only do Yeohlee pieces “last a lifetime,” as she puts it, they give you something to think about. Patricia McLaughlin, writing for the Universal Press Syndicate in 2004, said, “You kind of expect clothes that carry a lot of intellectual baggage to be artsy and unwearable. But Yeohlee Teng’s are beautiful, graceful, useful, [and] easy to wear. Maybe fashion isn’t just for airheads after all.”
There is certainly a lot of thought that goes into this designer’s innovative pattern making. Teng takes interstitial spaces, like that between a body and a dress, into account while always leaving room for the extraordinary. “I always understood that there was magic in clothing,” she says.
Vogue: What’s your earliest fashion memory?
Yeohlee Teng: From the very beginning it was my mom. In Malaysia during Chinese New Year, there’s seven days of celebration and my mother would want to make a dress for each day and we would collaborate on it. Not when I was really tiny, but when I got to have an opinion, she would involve me with the process, including going to the bazaar to shop for fabric and trim. So I was brought up to be involved with what one wears. At a very young age, I went and studied with a Javanese pattern-making teacher and learned how to make patterns.
How did you decide on fashion as a career?
Well, it was like, am I going to go to law school, or am I going to go into fashion? And then Parsons came calling and that was it; it was decided. Malaysia, it was Malaya then, was a British colony, so all my friends went to London and I came to New York, which was kind of fun and contrary.
Can you describe your design philosophy?
I think of clothing as the first shelter that you build around yourself, and so it has to function in multiple ways. I always think about clothing being not just how you can project yourself, but how you can protect yourself at the same time. I always understood that there was magic in clothing; I knew that clothes had magic because I saw [that] if you’re a powerful person, chances are you have a big tall hat—like the Indian chief, the Pope. So I thought there were qualities about clothing that surpass just the visual aspect. I think that there’s magic in the numbering system, and there’s magic in geometry, and shapes and forms. And there are powerful shapes and forms through eternity.
Shelter is a lot about space around the body, right?
I made a dress once. It had three tiers of rectangles, hanging. Three rows of rectangles. And the first row was six rectangles and the dimensions were six times six; what it occupied was 36 square inches. And then the second row was six times seven, and that was 42 inches. But then your rectangle would be longer by an inch. And then the last one, the six by nine inches, which is 54 inches, and then it’s two inches longer than seven and three inches longer than the first row. So you have this dress that has six rectangles around it: three in the front, three in the back; in the back three rows with different proportions. I ended up making that dress for a show called Folk Couture for the American Folk Art Museum, and I did that in paper. The proportions were just magical.
Can you go into more detail about your zero-waste approach to design?
I grew up on an island, and when you grow up on an island you know that all resources are limited. I’m not talking about today, just think about if you’re stranded on an island you only have so much that you can utilize. So being aware of that, it makes conservation a very instinctual thing to do.
One example of this way of working is your famous one-seam cape. How did you come to design it?
I was in school and I wanted to make something that was not only very useful, but very thought-through. I was trying to make clothes that used up all the material because I didn’t want to waste anything and I didn’t want to spend a lot of money. I made the cape out of necessity and it worked. It was a really good design and it was my first order; Dawn Mello [of Bergdorf Goodman] actually gave me an order for 200 pieces. It was a one-size-fits-all and everybody bought it, everybody knocked it off. I’m still making it.
Is there anything autobiographical about your work?
I would say that the sarong had a big influence on me because that’s your ultimate zero-waste garment: It’s a piece of fabric. Women wear it, men wear it, children wear it—and it’s only distinguishable by patterns and you can wear it many different ways, like as a skirt, under your arm with a baju. I think that some of the influences from growing up in the tropics in Malaysia, which is very, very multicultural, probably seeps through my clothes, because I do make bajus, which are what the Malays and Indians wear and they are genderless clothes. There’s a thread in my work of genderless clothing, because even now the clothes that I have in the store are both for men and women, and I don’t really make a huge effort to distinguish between them—and neither do the clients.
Is enough attention given to functionality in fashion these days?
I think it depends on the person that makes [the clothes], it really depends on how you think about them. There are a lot of clothes that are alluring; they’re invitations and they’re also hunting gear. You can make something very practical but because of how you expose the nape of the neck it can be very seductive.
What are some of the changes you’ve observed in fashion over the years?
I think it’s ever-changing, but to a certain degree it’s no longer as restrictive as it has been in the past. It’s like today, anything goes, I mean there are no rules anymore.
How can fashion move forward when there are no rules to break?
I think that one needs to find solutions, so in order to find solutions, you have to figure out what the needs are, right? And I think that we’re entering into a world where your clothing is ultimately the first shelter that you build around yourself. And it could also end up to be the only shelter that you have, depending on what circumstances are as the climate changes. You could be running from a flood, you could be running from a fire. You know, you can think about clothing from many different angles. You can think about it from going out, or you can think about it as a necessity. And I think that it’s a choice that one makes as a designer, which element you are going to consider. Thinking about how useful clothes are and can be, and at the same time, how luxurious they can look in their simplicity, and how wonderful one can feel in the right proportions over one’s body, they’re all things to be considered.
Do you think fashion is doing enough about climate change?
There is a nucleus of people that are very concerned and I am glad that they’re there, and there are other people that, I don’t know what word to use, slower in the uptake. But I think that everybody understands what needs to happen. In the end waste is waste, it’s bad.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
