To purchase YEOHLEE: WORK click here.

“YEOHLEE : WORK surveys the career of one of the world’s most remarkable and innovative clothing designers. Yeohlee’s designs, grounded in a consistent philosophical commitment to simplicity, economy, and physical awareness, express a powerful vision of clothing as functional art. It is no surprise that her work has won the praise of the world’s most esteemed fashion theorists and critics.”

John S. Major, Editor of YEOHLEE : WORK

“Clothes have magic. Their geometry forms shapes that can lend a wearer power.”

Yeohlee Teng

Edited by

JOHN S MAJOR

YEOHLEE TENG

Excerpt

Fashion: Yeohlee Tang

by Richard Flood

In The Structures of Everyday Life, Fernand Braudel states: “The history of costume is less anecdotal than would appear. It touches on every issue – raw materials, production processes, manufacturing costs, cultural stability, fashion and social hierarchy. Subject to incessant change, costume everywhere is a persistent reminder of social position”. In her catalog comments for the “Intimate Architecture” exhibition at MIT’s Hayden Gallery, Yeohlee Teng states: “Clothes have magic. Their geometry forms shapes that can lend a wearer power”. In both quotations, there is an awareness and acceptance of fashion’s inherent hieratic structure. What is particularly interesting in Teng’s remarks is the allegation of totemic function – of something beyond the measurable phenomena cited by Braudel. This is entirely appropriate insofar as Braudel is dealing in history and Teng in seduction.

If one were to search for historical antecedents to Teng’s designs, one appropriate, albeit romantic source might be the Spanish court of the 16th century. Under Philip III and IV, only the elegant sobriety of impeccably tailored, inevitably black garments was acceptable. For the Spanish monarchs, black not only implied high moral purpose, it promoted a theater of rarified ritual behavior. Similarly, Teng has invested in the emblematic formality of black. So too, she plays with it as an indicator of Mandarin presence. In her more ambitious garments, there is more than just a hint of the kind of luxe fetishism that might overtake an aristocratic order of nuns cloistered in a Ken Russell movie. This is serious glamor, but it is also fun.

While Teng’s garments move freely through the approved vocabulary of 20th-century geometric forms, they are equally dedicated to revealing subtle rhythmic and structural surprises of a more visceral than contemplative nature. Whether it is the incisive strategy which throws her pleating into monochromatic high relief, her ability to apply piping as a decisive ordering principle, or her sensual exploration of the passage from snakeskin to silk, Teng manages to synthesize style into a poetry about the possibility of fabric. She makes clothes which, for the

most part, imply functional formality. There is no hysterical bid for attention, yet her clothes are consistently dramatic because they are so confident in the body’s ability to activate them.

Teng makes clothes which recall the throwaway drama of Valentina and the streamlined hauteur of Norell. She also makes clothes which fondly, sentimentally reference the whimsical genius of Charles James. The work is firmly planted in an American design tradition. And because of that, her quotation is never fussy or obtuse. The lines are clean and contemporary; the garments are made to animate – not freeze – the wearer. What Teng’s garments evoke is a magical world of self-defined achievers – costumes for dancers in a delicious piece of postmodern choreography.

Designed by

PATRICIA MCKENNA

YEOHLEE TENG

With essays by

PAOLA ANTONELLI

ANDREW BOLTON

RICHARD FLOOD

HAROLD KODA

MARYLOU LUTHER

RICHARD MARTIN

SUSAN SIDLAUSKAS

VALERIE STEELE

YEOHLEE TENG

To purchase YEOHLEE: WORK click here.