Leong Man Teng (also using the English name Esther Leong), born in Macao in 1985, is a fashion designer and painter and the founder of the personal label GELÉE. She holds a BFA and an MFA (Western painting) from National Taiwan Normal University and trained in fashion design and manufacture at the Macao Productivity and Technology Transfer Center (CPTTM). She founded GELÉE in 2014, naming it after the French word for "jelly," with a focus on avant-garde, artistic womenswear. As a working painter she folds her own garment designs into her canvases, moving between art and utility — one of the few Macao creatives equally at home in fashion and painting.

In Leong Man Teng's hands a garment and a painting are the same thing — she named her label after "jelly," paints the cleverness of fabric onto canvas, and wears the imagination of a painting on the body.

Leong Man Teng (also Esther Leong), born in Macao in 1985, is a fashion designer and painter and the founder of the personal label GELÉE. She named the brand after the French word for "jelly" — moldable, changeable, sweet — and, as a creator equally invested in clothing and painting, lets the two media seep into one another, one of the few Macao designers who works across both fashion and fine art.

Profile

  • Chinese Name: 梁敏婷
  • English Name: Leong Man Teng (also Esther Leong)
  • Born: 1985 (Macao)
  • Domains: Culture · Business
  • Industry: Fashion design · Painting
  • Profession: Fashion designer · Painter · Brand founder
  • Affiliation: GELÉE

Background

Leong was born in Macao in 1985, with art and fashion training spanning Macao and Taiwan. She earned a BFA from National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU) in 2009 and an MFA in Western painting from the same university in 2016, and began doctoral study there around 2020; along the way she took a diploma in fashion design and manufacture at the Macao Productivity and Technology Transfer Center (CPTTM) in 2012. After graduating she taught visual arts at Kwong Tai Middle School in Macao (2009–2014) and worked as a designer for the brand "Maconsef" under an incubation programme (2012–2014), laying the groundwork for her own label. She is now mainly based between Taiwan (Taipei) and Macao; GELÉE garments are produced mostly in Taiwan and sold online and on consignment in Macao.

Career

I. Founding GELÉE (2014)

In June 2014, Leong founded the personal fashion label GELÉE (French for "jelly"). The brand uses jelly's moldability and sweetness as a metaphor for its spirit, focusing on avant-garde, artistic womenswear in silk, chiffon, lace, beadwork and fishtail cuts, often with Eastern elements such as ink-painting motifs. Recent collections include "Carousel" (SS2024) and "The Other Shore" (SS2025).