“Person Place Thing” with Yeohlee Teng
Fashion designer and founder of YEOHLEE
About the Speakers
Yeohlee Teng, Fashion Designer and Founder of YEOHLEE; MAS Board of Directors
Award-winning designer Yeohlee Teng was born in Malaysia and is based in New York City, where she established her house, YEOHLEE Inc, in 1981. Yeohlee believes that design comes from serving a function and her design is refined through time and process. Her designs are driven by material, maximizing the use of each fabric by thoughtful consideration of weight, texture, color, cut and finishing. She believes that “clothes have magic. Their geometry forms shapes that can lend a wearer power.” Yeohlee’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions worldwide and is part of the permanent collections of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where curator Richard Martin called her “one of the most ingenious makers of clothing today. Yeohlee’s clothes conserve and impart energy for they are the synthesis of reason and magic.” YEOHLEE’s collection is — and has always been — designed, developed and produced in New York City. Made in New York has the advantage of a quick “just in time” response that is critical in todays’ economy. This accessibility promotes efficiency, conserves time, energy, and resources, and ties in with Yeohlee’s zero waste philosophy. YEOHLEE : WORK was published in 2003 and surveys the first 20 years of her practice with essays by prominent fashion, art and design curators and critics. Yeohlee is the recipient of the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award for Fashion 2004. In 2010 YEOHLEE NY, a Made in New York retail store, was established in the Garment District. Today the store and workroom are located at 12 West 29th Street in the NoMad/Flatiron neighborhood.
Randy Cohen, Host of Person Place Thing
Randy Cohen’s first professional work was writing humor pieces, essays, and stories for newspapers and magazines (The New Yorker, Harpers, The Atlantic, Young Love Comics). His first television work was writing for Late Night With David Letterman, for which he won three Emmy awards. His fourth Emmy was for his work on Michael Moore’s TV Nation. He received a fifth Emmy as a result of a clerical error, and he kept it. For twelve years he wrote “The Ethicist,” a weekly column for The New York Times Magazine. His most recent book, Be Good: How to Navigate the Ethics of Everything, was published by Chronicle. Learn more about Person Place Thing, and listen to past episodes here.
Tara Kelly, Vice President of Policy and Programs
Tara Kelly joined MAS in October 2015. Previously, she was Executive Director of Friends of the Upper East Side Historic Districts. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Isles of Shoals Association, the Board of Advisors of the Historic Districts Council, as well as the Island Heritage & Artifacts and Property Standards Committees of the Star Island Corporation. She holds an M.S. in Historic Preservation from Pratt Institute and a B.S. in Linguistics from Georgetown University.
Questions?
Contact us at events@mas.org.
