Chic Laundress

On a dark and drizzly evening, I climb six flights of stairs to arrive at Jessica Yuen’s Tribeca showroom, both winded and impressed.

“I was going for kind of a mental hospital thing,” the design maven behind Bedford Street Laundry explains as she combs through the rack of her Fall/Winter 2011 designs. Coats have straitjacket details and the accessories–chokers, bracelets, necklaces and belts–are reminiscent of antique medical restraints.  Wrap-around tops, hooded vests, and array of skirts evoke a kind of sexy, tough-girl chic.  “In the back of my mind, I always consider that if someone were to attack me, I’d be dressed to fight back,” Jessica laughs, “I don’t mean bulletproof or armor, but something that wouldn’t hinder me from kicking ass.”

While her pieces are edgy, they’re also avant-garde, a design quality she was able to develop while studying at both Parsons New York and Parsons Paris.  “When I was at Parsons Paris, they really encouraged us to use unconventional methods and material,” she says. “I found that I wanted to do something between what I learned there and what I learned at Parsons New York, to kind of dance between the extreme and the commercial.”  With Bedford Street Laundry, Jessica does just this, combining goat suede, industrial rubber, and Jiffy Grip with feminine updates of classic silhouettes.

Jessica, a Queens native, has been fashion-obsessed since birth, always drawing inspiration from her environment. “I started listening to hip hop in eighth grade and went through a phase where I only wanted to wear Ecko Red,” Jessica laughs. “Toward the end of high school, I wanted to be an Abercrombie girl, and eventually my style kind of fell into place.”

Jessica’s fashion career path, like her style evolution, is a sartorial mish-mash. After graduating from Parsons in 2008, she interned at Ohne Titel, started a short-lived blog, and worked for a stylist–all while looking for full-time design work.  “When I graduated, jobs were not a-plenty!” she says, “After a while, I got sick of styling, hauling bags of clothes to stylists’ apartments and to showrooms. I was doing a lot of freelance and I finally said, ‘Why don’t I just start a line and stop waiting around?’” She turned her Queens basement into a studio, dubbed the line in honor of her family’s business, and Bedford Street Laundry was born.

“There’s been a lot of controversy over the name…because fashion editors don’t like the word ‘laundry,’” Jessica explains. “Hopefully, my designs will speak for themselves.”

Bedford Street Laundry is available at EVA NY and online at I Don’t Like Mondays.