She Has Inside-Out Interest in Design and Construction

Yeohlee (pronounced Yo’lee) Teng says she designs for women who want practical, sophisticated clothes. She’s not only interested in how the outside of her garments look but also in “construction and maximizing the use of fabric,” she said during a recent visit to I. Magnin, Beverly Hills.

“If you study clothing history,” Teng explained, “you see that in the past, most apparel was determined by the width of the loom. However wide the loom was, that’s how wide the clothes were. And the little parts that were cut out--for example, to accommodate the neck--were turned into something like pockets. Every scrap of material was used. I belong to that school.”

The “little black dress” in her 40-piece fall collection is clear evidence of this discipline. It is a silk faille minidress with slim skirt and three ruffled tiers at back, resembling a little cape. The tiers, piped in silver, are constructed from extra fabric in the cutting.

Teng’s gold-color, collarless wool coat is edged in black and comes with a matching length of wool Velmina to be used either as a muffler or waist wrap. “Piping is the signature of this collection, defining shapes and forms,” explained Yeohlee.

The designer also tries to break down barriers, she says, to persuade women that they can look good in other than the traditional ways.

“Take the suit I’m wearing,” she said, pointing to her black wool tunic jacket, fastened in the back with the aid of two large, but different-size, matching wool-covered buttons and worn over a short straight skirt. “It’s non-traditional but it is a suit, and it commands just as much authority as a ‘regular’ one.”

The clean, distinct lines of Yeohlee’s fashions suggest a relationship to architecture, and it’s no accident that her work, along with that of Giorgio Armani, Gianfranco Ferre and Issey Miyake, was selected for an exhibit at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology titled “Intimate Architecture: Contemporary Clothing Design,” now part of a permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Yeohlee, who grew up in Malaysia and is of Chinese ancestry, remembers being interested in design when she was very young. “I went to pattern-making school when I was 9 years old (she was the only child in a class of adults), because I had all these ideas I wanted to execute.”

While studying at Parsons School of Design in New York City, she landed a job in the fashion industry--and just three years later, in 1974, she opened her own business.