Yeohlee
CASE STUDY
Created by Redress
YEOHLEE
“Clothes have magic. Their geometry forms shapes that can lend the wearer power.”
- Yeohlee Teng
In this case study, you will discover how effective zero-waste pattern creation can influence a designer’s identity. Yeohlee’s commitment of fabric utilisation and form allow her designs to perform both with functionality and as art.
Image credit: Yeohlee
Image credit: Yeohlee
Image credit: Yeohlee
Yeohlee Teng started her fashion house in 1981, after moving from Malaysia to New York to study at the Parsons School of Design.
She is regarded as a pioneer zero-waste designer in contemporary fashion.
Her flagship store is in the heart of New York City, with her clothes made in the New York Garment District and sold internationally.
Yeohlee believes that “design comes from serving a function and is refined through time and process.” Her design process starts from the materials she uses, and she maximises the use of each fabric by consideration of its weight, texture, colour and finishing. Her respect for fabric even expands to using selvages within her designs.
For her AW2009 collection, named Zero Waste, Yeohlee drew inspiration from “the economy in design, fabric and execution, and functionality” - again with every inch of the fabrics used following the principle of zero-waste. In this principally black collection, geometric patterns such as triangles, squares and rectangles were a dominant feature, with heavily draped but structured silhouettes, also a signature of Yeohlee Teng’s designs.
This collection was shown in her Garment District showroom and at the end of the show, a model wearing a layered sarong took the piece off and laid it on the runway, matching it up to a tangram lookalike zero-waste pattern, reinforcing her commitment to zero waste.
A video of the show is available here: vimeo.com/5525336
For SS2015, she created a ready-to-wear collection which responded to the complexities of living and working in an urban environment.
She again demonstrated her love of geometry and its efficiency for using fabrics economically, creating fitted designs through panelling and folding.
She described one of her pieces - “I wanted to make it look like a flattened box and constructed it out of 34 inches of fabric in total. Saving material like that is the olive in the martini for me.”
A video of the show is available here: vimeo.com/105889477
Her work is permanently exhibited in the Costume Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, United States, The Kyoto Costume Institute, Japan, and The Victoria and Albert Museum, UK.
In 2003, she published a book to record her work and approach to fashion design called Yeohlee: Work.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Yeohlee Teng (2006), Yeohlee: Work