Yeohlee Teng wins National Design Award for Excellence in Fashion Design

A night on the town with Fashion designer Yeohlee and a behind the scenes look at Olympus fashion week

At the pinnacle of her multi-faceted career, fashion designer Yeohlee Teng is radiant as she steps to the podium to accept the prestigious National Design Award for Excellence in Fashion Design from artist Rainer Judd.

Over 500 people in the art, design and fashion industries attended the gala at the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum this evening in New York, to celebrate Yeohlee and eight other individuals and companies for their contributions to the design world.

Equally lauded in the arenas of architecture, art and fashion design, it is fitting that Yeohlee be recognized for her "seasonless efficiency, striking geometry and concise functionalism."

The National Design Awards program was originally launched at the White House in 2000 as an official project of the White House Millennium Council and is a celebration of excellence in design. Fellow Parsons Alumni Marc Jacobs and Narciso Rodriguez were also finalists for the Fashion Design Award.

For more than 20 years, this New York based Malaysian-born designer has crafted Intimate Architecture , elegant minimalist designs for women just like herself - intellectually savvy citizens of the world.

Chic sophisticates covet, collect and wear her luxurious low maintenance ensembles for the modern professional. Museums have displayed her creations as works of art in numerous exhibitions around the globe since the start of her illustrious career.

The designer's path to success began with a childhood passion for architecture and fashion design in her hometown of Georgetown, Penang.

Yeohlee's mother made her clothes with patterns from England as ready-to-wear options were few. Taking control of her own destiny at nine years of age, she convinced her mother to let her take pattern-making classes.

At the age of 18, she left Malaysia for New York to study at Parsons School of Design . Encouraged by the legendary Halston to be her own boss in 1976, she sold her first collection to Henri Bendel . 23 years ago, she started her own company, YEOHLEE, Inc.

In 1982, she made her mark in the art world when her designs were featured in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Hayden Gallery Group Exhibition, Intimate Architecture: Contemporary Clothing Design . Her work was showcased, joining works by other designers Georgio Armani, Gianfranco Ferre, Claude Montana and Issey Miyake. The designs in the exhibition were photographed by fine art photographer Robert Mapplethorpe.

Since then, her creations have been on view at museums throughout the world including PS 1, the London College of Fashion, the Musee de la Mode et du Costume, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam , and in the permanent collection of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art .

In 1998, Yeohlee's work was exhibited in a show entitled Energetics: Clothes and Enclosures along with the work of architect Ken Yeang. The show paralleled the disciplines of architecture and clothing design and showcased how the architecture of the spaces affected the design of the exhibition. At the Aedes East Gallery in Berlin, the clothes were enclosed by glass panels.

In 2001, Yeohlee's designs from 1982 to 2001 were on view in Yeohlee: Supermodern Style , a solo exhibition curated by Dr. Valerie Steele at the Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology .

Yeohlee is currently collaborating with Yeang on a new exhibition in Beijing.

Last year, Yeohlee released her first book, Yeohlee: Work, Material Architecture . The book covers Yeohlees designs and process over a 20 year period and is complete with pictures, sketches, patterns, plans and exhibitions.

Museum curators and fashion critics contributed to Yeohlee's book, including MoMA curator Paola Antonelli, Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology 's director Dr. Valerie Steele, and the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art curators Harold Koda and Andrew Bolton.

According to Andrew Bolton, "There is no room for chance in Yeohlee's clothes. They read as complex mathematical equations precise, logical and balanced. By the repetition of design motifs, her clothes convey a sense of order and structure, creating an aesthetic that is more akin to industrial design than to fashion. Their rhythm is that of the street and the subway "non-places" that reflect and reveal the excesses and exigencies of city life."

Yeohlee is in the midst of orchestrating her New York moment in her W. 35th Street showroom. This is the culmination of a six month process from sketch to show for the designer who has been up since 6:30am.

Clad in a black cropped jacket and tee, a grey pencil skirt with holster pockets of her own design, and pointy toe flats, she oversees each detail from conducting press interviews, to supervising the Aveda makeup and hair crews transforming a diverse group of real women into her "models" du jour. The atmosphere is light and bustling with backstage runway activity as the mid-afternoon sun floods her 16th floor showroom.

The roster of 30 women personally selected by Yeohlee includes actresses, artists, designers, musicians and journalists. As the dressers outfit each one, Yeohlee gives her seal of approval after rolling a sleeve just so, or tying the perfect knot on a silk cartwheel jacquard sarong.

Supermodel Irina Pantaeva, Christina Ha (Full Frontal Fashion correspondent), Sarah Brown (As the World Turns ), Katrina Campins (The Apprentice ), Farrah Fawcett, Finola Hughes, Rainer Judd, Elsa Klensch (former CNN fashion journalist and mystery writer), Ladybug Mecca (Digable Planet musician), Rachel Perry (VH-1 vj), Atoosa Rubenstein (editor-in-chief of Seventeen ) and Constance White (fashion director for Ebay ) are just a few of her muses this season.

While many of Yeohlee's colleagues are previewing their new lines on stark white runways in the tents at Bryant Park , the designer taps into a different venue by taking her show underground - literally.

A bus transports the models to the 42nd Street B-D-F Station ; the gritty subway platform located directly beneath Bryant Park is Yeohlee's urban runway. Street percussionists keep the beat while photographers, buyers and fashion editors flanking the longest runway of the season are enveloped in her New York moment.

Reflecting upon the different personas of the women in the show with her new Spring collection, Yeohlee's signature architectural geometry is evident in her use of circles, rectangles, squares and triangles which recall the tiles, columns and flagstone architectural ornaments in the subway. Her color palette of white, grey and blue is interspersed with shots of metallic.

From her Malaysian culture, she incorporates the sarong, the cape and the poncho into each of her lines. Playing on an "East meets West concept," she takes what she deems the "best from both worlds" by integrating them into contemporary clothes using high tech fabrics.

Her favorite fabric this season is a linen/polyurethane that ages with the wearer. Skirts and pants have holster pockets, both stylish and practical, just the right size for metrocards, cellphones, or digital cameras.

It's a party during the finale as Yeohlee joins Veronica Kelly, Finola Hughes, Farrah Fawcett, Elsa Klensch, Ladybug Mecca and Anna Anissimova who are dancing on the subway platform. The moment the show is over, she is surrounded by reporters, tv crews and photographers who vie for her attention.

When asked why she chose to have her show in the subway, Yeohlee enthused, " I wanted to see the clothes shown in an actual transitional space and felt that it would be the experience of a lifetime."

Lia: Which are your favorite pieces from the Spring collection?

Yeohlee: I love the 11 circle skirt and all the other circle pieces
especially the mantle with circles worn by Irina Pantaeva.

Lia: What is your design philosophy?

Yeohlee: Keep it simple

Lia: How would you define the Yeohlee woman?

Yeohlee Thinking

Lia: What are the characteristics of a typical Yeohlee garment?

Yeohlee: Simple and subtle

Lia: What advice do you have for up and coming designers?

Yeohlee: Go for it

Lia: What is it about the Asian aesthetic that is so popular in fashion, architecture and art?

Yeohlee: It's functional simplicity, balance and proportion.

Lia: How did you feel when you won the National Design Award?

Yeohlee: I was overwhelmed by the amount of support.

www.yeohlee.com

Complete list of National Design Award recipients: Lifetime Achievement, Milton Glaser; Architecture Design, Rick Joy and Polshek Partnership; Environment Design, William McDonough +Partners; Fashion Design, Yeohlee Teng; Product Design, Yves Behar; Design Patron, Amanda M. Burden; Corporate Achievement, Aveda Corporation; Communications Design, @Radical.Media

Cooper Hewitt National Design Award Website
www.cooperhewitt.org

Click here for highlights of Yeohlee's SPRING 2003 Collection during Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week.