Bad Binch TONGTONG SS27 Meets Its Match at the Balloon Museum

Terrence Zhou wrote that the clothes “distort the body, exaggerate it, protect it, expose it, make it ridiculous, make it beautiful.”

Photography by Karla Tomanelli

At Bad Binch TONGTONG, curiosity and intrigue began before the show did. “Where is the show?” is, in fact, the question attendees hushedly asked each other as they traversed through room after room of DAYDREAM—AIR BECOMES ART, the immersive exhibit on display at the Balloon Museum where the show was held.

The show was in the final room of the exhibit—past, for example, giant horns that blew bubbles and a wind tunnel filled with hundreds of balloons—and presented in the round, beneath dancing orbs of multi-colored light.

This tension between feeling antsy and wanting to get settled. The fear of the show starting without you, and the inexplicable feeling of childlike wonder while encountering DAYDREAM animated the entire collection. The show opened with an imposing pink hemispherical gown covered in overlapping transparent disks seemingly of rice paper. The model, or “alien” per the show notes, wore a bejeweled helmet encircled with seven identical faces.

Photography by Karla Tomanelli

But rather than stay grand, designer Terrence Zhou quickly upended expectations with an extremely wearable suite of slinky and sensual pleated dresses featuring the brand’s penchant for flared hems. He then pivoted again, away from sophistication and into the effervescent, with dresses and tops consumed by dual-toned neon frill.

Then came the playing with shapes. Lampshade-as-gown realness. Velour stretched over stilts to create geometric homes for the models’ bodies, each one more constricting than the last. And a final suite seemingly dedicated to feathers—but they were constructed of that same crepey material that embellished the opening gown.

In his show notes, Zhou wrote that the clothes “distort the body, exaggerate it, protect it, expose it, make it ridiculous, make it beautiful.”

Thus, the neon color palette and whimsical avant-garde silhouettes manage to not feel gimmicky because Zhou has forced the audience to notice: the simple elegance of the space between a model’s body and the flouncing pleats of a giant lampshade; the sense of danger and pressure as a model’s appendages bulge out of their fabric cage; the whimsy when a feather dress casts a shadow in the unsuspecting color of its lining.