Terrence Zhou thinks of his clothes like poetry. Under the moniker Bad Binch TONGTONG, the Wuhan-born, New York-based artist and fashion designer is known for his outlandish silhouettes, like mermaid tails and octopi skirts, which frequently go viral on social media. Since launching the brand in 2020, celebrities including Rina Sawayama, Olivia Rodrigo, Camila Cabello, Halsey, and Christina Aguilera have worn his designs for occasions like Saturday Night Live promo and in multiple international versions of Vogue. But for Zhou, it's not about exposure, he says. His main objective is simply to evoke emotion, to relay a story or a feeling.
That ethos showed through at Zhou’s New York Fashion Week debut on Friday, for the spring/summer 2023 season. Zhou emphasized form over function and expression over commerce with looks that included a fleece, green, zebra-printed cape in the shape of a butterfly and a jacquard iteration of his mermaid tail. Even more wearable items thrown into the mix, such as his popular hoop dresses, felt romantic.
Before pursuing fashion design, Zhou pursued a B.S. degree in Mathematics and Engineering — both procedural and empirical studies that still partly inform his work. As such, the show included moments like two tethered models in spherical dresses orbiting each other like planets but never touching, and a finale that saw the entire cast crawling through a stretched fabric tube, like a wormhole curving space and time.
Since movement was core to the show, Zhou collaborated with Stefanie Nelson, artistic director of the eponymous dance group, who brought each garment to life. Dancers emerged from a massive, blow-up replica of Zhou’s head, then moved around the space dressed as spiders, octopi, centipedes, and mermaids — all while getting into the character of each creature they embodied —lending to the “spiritually autobiographical performance,” as the press release explained. “Silhouettes are merely a physical transformation of his most present emotions. As shapes connect, push, repel, and transcend, they communicate the experiences that have led him to this moment.”
We spoke with Bad Bing TONGTONG about breaking rules, the romanticism of math, and pushing for a more inclusive version of beauty.
Hi Terrence! Congratulations on your debut runway show. Let’s start at the beginning. How did you get to this point?
I came to the United States when I was 17 to pursue a mathematics degree with an engineering track. Then after my sophomore year, I decided to transfer to Parsons for art and design. Although a lot of people might think that they are totally different, I think art and math have a lot of similarities. I love both subjects, and I find that both of them are very romantic, so it was easy for me to channel both subjects and leverage both experiences to manage design disciplines.
What motivated you to finally do a show during fashion week?
We decided to have it at the last minute. I was debating if I should have one because I already have a lot of like people recognizing my work on social media and have built a robust community. But then I thought that my show could be something people have never experienced during fashion week when they see the garments move, especially on dancers.
While watching the show, I went through a rollercoaster of emotions: melancholy, feelings, isolation, loneliness, and joy. Is that what you hoped to express to the audience?
Connecting to the audience is one of the major themes for my design that’s guided me through my processes. And when people watched the show, they went through different layers of emotions because I'm providing a platform for people to feel, rather than me enforcing how they should feel. I think of creating my pieces like creating poems, which I call a non-rational language. Think of language as a tree. A rational language system asks how many leaves are on the branch, but then non-rational language asks about what is above the tree — something that you cannot touch. When I try to describe what my designs are, the feeling diminishes. When people can feel something, it's more powerful than me explaining something. Obviously, the objects are very self explanatory, like octopi and spiders, but what I want to express are the subtleties. When people walk out of the show, they feel whatever they feel from seeing familiar shapes. It is exactly what I described in the show notes: “Just FEEL it!” Me and the audience meet on middle ground in the show. We create this moment together.
I immediately felt those layers at the top of the show when the mermaid began crawling out of the life-sized blow up of your head. What was that about?
A major topic in all of my work is unlearning. For example, when we practiced, I encouraged the dancers to actually forget they're human and think of themselves as a real bug that’s attracted by lights or a mermaid taking off its tail for the first time and trying to learn how to walk. When the mermaid starts to walk, dance, and interact like a human in a group, it represents my feelings as a designer that doing something that is authentic to myself might not be recognized by the majority or by the industry.
And a huge part of the fashion industry is concerned about sales and wearability. Are you?
Fashion as a business and fashion as a storytelling format is totally different. A show should be about storytelling and not necessarily about selling, which could have its own channels, like buyers seeing the clothes in real life separately to decide what they want to buy. When designers just put on a show to sell clothes people can buy, that feels more like taking from the audience. I feel like I'm giving rather than taking from the audience. I want people to have an emotional takeaway when they watch my show. I want them to think about this moment and have it live in their heart. When I do a show, it has meaning.
Are you able to convey the same meaning on, say, an Instagram post that goes viral?
I post authentic images in my studio and in my room to present what my life actually is. My Instagram is not so serious like other fashion brands that try to post perfect images. It’s casual: what my studio looks like, which is sometimes really messy, and me as a person. Going viral is never my goal or intention. It's just a byproduct of good work, which is what I want to create first. At the end of the day, I hope people recognize my work and vision and are touched by it in some way. That's way more important than going viral.
What in the show was something that we already haven’t seen on social media?
The show was about my body of work. Usually how I work is I make something, and then I publish on my social media piece by piece. I barely publish season by season. These pieces are actually built upon my previous work. I never think that a good piece of art or body of work is a single piece. They have a journey, and there is a process. For example, I had this octopus dress made early on, and the mermaid tale was on a Vogue cover. Then I started to build upon those shapes and explored other options for the show.
With all of the shapes you create, I can’t help but think about geometry. Has your background in math shaped the way you create?
A lot of people say that math is just numbers, but it’s actually romantic. It's only when I actually became an outsider to mathematics that I began to appreciate that. Kind of like you have to leave Manhattan to see how beautiful the Manhattan skyline is. I wouldn't say that I constantly think about equations when I design, but studying mathematics successfully laid a foundation for me to understand the world and interpersonal relationships.
There was a moment when two dancers in bulbous garments were connected by a piece of fabric and slowly circled each other but never broke eye contact and never touched.
I’ve always been inspired by the inverse function: Y equals one over X. I think that's the most romantic function ever because, on a graph, the curve it makes always approaches the X and Y axis, but they never touch each other. I am always fascinated by space in between people — never touching but always getting closer. With human language, it's hard to describe this kind of extremity.
As you mentioned before, a big reason for putting on an IRL show was for us to be able to see your garments move. Tell me about working with the choreographer, Stefanie.
I didn’t want models just walking down the runway with a dead face. Stefanie and I have always wanted to work together and have been waiting for the right opportunity, which was this show. Working with her has been magical because although she has a completely different background than me, we’d think about the same references. When she saw my design of two octopi facing together while she was directing the movement, she thought about Marina Abramovic, who was actually my inspiration for the piece — the tension in Rest Energy, where she and Ulay are pulling the arrow. She also interpreted the dancers coming out from my inflatable face wearing my pieces as me experiencing transformation from a kid to who I am now. So then we actually invited my friend’s kid to be part of the show to play my younger self. There were a lot of moments like that when collaborating with her for the show. We had really honest conversations when we liked something and when we didn't like something.
It was beautiful to see all different types of people and bodies move in your pieces too.
I want people to know that fashion should be something empowering us, not limiting us. Why would I ever want my models to have a body that only a tiny percentage of the population can achieve? That's not authentic, and authenticity is really important to me. The cast represents real people, different body shapes, different heights, different ages, and differently abled. They're my friends, and they're my family. They represent us.
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