Meet the Penang-born Fashion Designer Whose Works Are Displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York

When listing Malaysian fashion greats, those who come to mind are Datuk Jimmy Choo, Zang Toi, Melinda Looi, and Bernard Chandran. However, despite being a globally acclaimed Asian American female designer, curiously, Yeohlee Teng’s name is not familiar to many Malaysians. In fact, her works are permanently displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Victoria & Albert, London. Her label is even a regular fixture in Vogue, so it is a shame that Yeohlee Teng is not a household name in her home country.

Leaving One Island for Another

The designer was born in Penang in 1951 and attended St. George’s Girls’ School, an all-girls secondary school––which is incidentally, this writer’s school too.

Speaking to Vogue about her earliest fashion memory, she recalled, “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.”

According to Luxury Daily, Yeohlee said, “My brothers and their friends were all architects. We had this big sketchbook in our house that everybody drew in, so I grew up drawing. I was the school artist and designed all the costumes for our school plays and painted the murals there. I remember working on a mural with my best friend that was the length of the basketball court – my first lesson in scale.”

In an interview with Japanese-base magazine TOKION, she recalled, “I had a wonderful childhood growing up on an island that’s 46 miles in circumference. For fun you either rode your bike around the island or hiked up Penang Hill. I painted several murals at school, designed costumes for “The Importance of Being Ernest”, “A Tale of Two Cities” and “Lady Windermere’s Fan”. Existing costumes were housed in the clocktower at school – it was an inspiring and awesome education.”

In the 1970s, she was contemplating between going to law school or to pursue fashion. She traded one island for another and moved to New York to study fashion at the famed Parsons School of Design while her friends went off to London. The college counts some of the most famous designers in the world including Tom Ford and Marc Jacobs amongst its notable alumni.

In 1981, she established her eponymous house and has worked primarily in New York City since then. In the same year, she was discovered by the legendary director at Bergdorf Goodman, Dawn Mello. Her flagship store is also currently located there, within walking distance of the Garment District, a place she has pioneered along with domestic manufacturing in the city, supporting the local businesses.

Passion for Sustainability, Before it Became a Trend

Although zero waste methods are widely practised nowadays, Yeohlee adopted the methods way from the very beginning before it was a trend. Each of her pieces are thoughtfully created to maximise the use of the fabric, mirroring her vision of sustainability and conscious fashion.

“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,” she told Vogue.

She also designed a one size fits all ‘zero waste’ cape in 1981 which was copied widely and is still being sold today which perfectly embodies her brand. Her pieces are known to cater to all ages, sizes, and genders.

Her Accolades

Vogue dubs her as a darling of the art world.” As a testament to her eminence, The New York Times has counted her amongst the first Asian designers to colonise U.S. fashion who were inadvertently mostly women. In 2004, she received the prestigious Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for fashion design.

Yeohlee has also published a book titled, ‘Yeohlee: Work’, which features insightful essays from a number of prominent fashion critics and curators, as well as beautiful colour photographs, and patterns for some of her most iconic designs.

In 2021, she received the Board of Directors’ Tribute at the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) Awards, of which she also serves as a board member. The award has also been won by David Bowie and Virgil Abloh. Michael Kors presented the award to her to mark her then 40th year in the industry saying, “Her intelligence and talent are always punctuated by a very sly sense of humour.”

Her Exhibitions

Her work in more than 40 museum exhibitions around the world including a solo collection, ‘YEOHLEE: Fashion in Motion’ at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. 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 have been exhibited as design art in many museums and galleries in countries such as Japan, France and Italy.

Her clothing is also in the permanent collection of the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art where the then chief curator, Richard Martin called her "one of the most ingenious makers of clothing today."

A Tribute to Her Malaysian Roots

Yeohlee attributes her cultural background in Malaysia to her emphasis on versatility and functionality seen throughout her work. “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,” she explained to Vogue.

With her designs being gender neutral, she has previously adopted the Sarong for the Fashion & Textile History Gallery, Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York. The displayed work was made of form lengths of organza with frayed, unfinished hems which fanned out and emphasised the gossamer quality of the fabric.

After reading about her endless achievements, it’s hard to believe that she hasn’t been awarded a Datukship already! Way to make Malaysia proud!

Visit her website here or follow her label on Instagram.

Image credit: @yeohleeny, yeohlee.com