Representing the creative future

Terrence Zhou is the internet’s favourite designer

Meet the designer that pushes the limits of what society thinks of clothing

“When people who have seen the dresses I make get to meet me in real life, they always seem a bit shocked to find out I’m not that outgoing,” Terrence Zhou tells us. When we talk over Zoom, admittedly, the designer comes across as calm and collected and is very attentive to the conversation, always seeking to take away something meaningful, always learning. In life, he’s ardently committed to whatever he decides to do, whether that’s practicing Latin ballroom dancing since the age of six, looking after his mental and physical health through meditation, bodybuilding, and dieting, or spending time at the library researching. But online, as perceived by others — he’s extra.

“In our society, there are so many underlying restrictions. Dress codes is one of them. However online there’s no such thing. When I post on social media, I can wear whatever I want,” Zhou says. On Instagram he’s been documenting his design process without filters, creating a space free of restrictions or fixed formulas of how fashion should be made and presented. Some of his peers even joke that he is “the elephant in the room” since the looks he creates pretty much take over the space in his New York flat. Staged in a narrow hallway, Zhou and his friends take iPhone portraits wearing dresses molded with considerably large and tiered lampshade-like panels, or with some kind of a massive pear-shaped inflated balloon, most of which are topped off with a hat whose brim is to blend with the rest of the outfit.

Zhou’s take on fashion is out of the ordinary and the results are often extreme compared to what we’re used to seeing in the industry. But when learning where the designer comes from, somehow it all makes sense. Terrence’s pledge to follow and do what feels right for him no matter what others may think goes a long way back, starting with the Latin ballroom dance classes his mother enrolled him in when he was a kid. Although he had his mum’s full support, as one of the few boys in the room, he remembers feeling the weight of the peer pressure put on him to join classes a typical young boy would usually undertake in Yuhan,China such as mathematics or English. The pressure got to a point where Terrence wanted to stop attending dance lessons altogether, but, thanks to the little black and shiny Cuban-heeled shoes he was required to wear in the studio, his early love for fashion took over the fear of judgment.

The one time he sort of deviated from his drive to pursue what he thought he was meant to do was when he entered college in Indiana to study math after his application to Parsons got rejected. “No one in my family had an art background and they would rather have seen me build a stable career than drawing sketches and doing fashion,” Terrence says. But deep down, he knew that enrolling in math wouldn’t mean he had to put a full stop to his plans to pursue a fashion degree. His journey to becoming a designer wasn’t over. “Even though I didn’t get a spot when I first applied, to re-apply was always in the back of my mind,” he says. And so in college he didn’t give up on his creative potential and took on an extra drawing course despite not getting school credits for it, to work on a portfolio he’d sent yet again to Parsons. He ended up being accepted and enrolling.

“There are many things in math that I find beautiful and that can be interpreted in different contexts, away from the desk, such as the concept of continuity, of ongoingness.” – Terrence Zhou

Yet for Terrence, the time spent studying mathematics was far from a waste of time — in part, he now realises, it helped him define his design approach and take on life. Though math may come across as a strictly pragmatic field, the designer suggests otherwise. “It leaves room for imagination and interpretation. In graphs, there are lines that get real close to each other, but will never, ever get to intersect. It’s abstract, I know, but there are many things in math that I find beautiful and that can be interpreted in different contexts, away from the desk, such as the concept of continuity, of ongoingness.”

Once at Parsons he learned the basics of clothes making just like the other students, following the usual curriculum. But fairly quickly he realised this wouldn’t do. “In class, I was absent-minded when our tutors taught us the proper way to design shirts and such things. I was either not completing my homework or was doing something entirely different than what we were asked to do, omitting to draw pockets or zippers in my sketches. It was all too technical for me,” he says.

And so, when the time came to start thinking about what he was going to make for his graduate collection, Terrence approached the task as he’s always done: he did what felt right to him, not to others. In class he began making phone calls to find a factory that would be willing to let the design student produce a single, out-of-the-ordinary dress. After about 60 attempts, two factory owners got back to him saying they were on board, but as one of them wouldn’t let him work on an actual sewing machine, he decided to go to the other factory, which was in Philadelphia. There, he spent three days designing one of his now-signature pieces — the wide-shoulder dress — and brought it back to the classroom.

“In the workshop, my dress took up so much room you couldn’t unsee it. There was an element of performance to it, and at that point, I knew this was what I wanted to explore with my clothes.” – Terrence Zhou

“That was a turning point for me,” the designer says. “In the workshop, it took up so much room you couldn’t unsee it. There was an element of performance to it, and at that point, I knew this was what I wanted to explore with my clothes.” That piece, in particular, with the wide shoulders, is reminiscent of the performative aspects of Terrence that he chose to celebrate. While not explicitly obvious, it echoes the designer’s fascination for the aesthetic and physiological changes that occurred to his own body frame when he started lifting weights, aiming for big shoulders and a small waist with sculpted abs. The form of the dress itself also carries a sense of fluidity and seems as if it will alternatively keep on getting closer to and further from the body, similar to the whole concept of continuity from mathematics. Funnily enough, Terrence once dreamed about seeing a UFO, and that, too, can be seen in the dress.

“The garments I make are quite sculptural with extreme silhouettes, they look unreal and definitely trigger something in people. Many think they’re unwearable for the everyday world but on the internet, people want to be different.” – Terrence Zhou

His graduate collection, titled Living as a performance, was in a way, the seed of his ambition to do just this — act as he pleases, and, also, of course, wear what he wants. From it arose lamp- and phallus-like dresses and a nipple-shaped bag, which were just as ambitious in terms of proportions and, as one could guess, they also have a compelling backstory. The inspired-by-lamps dress, for one, was initially supposed to be made up with actual bulbs, but this idea didn’t materialise given that the suppliers closed during Covid. It still made the cut and looked, with a bit of imagination, just like a walking piece of furniture.

The Balloon collection shot by Honglin Cai

In the year since Terrence graduated, he’s been sporadically releasing dresses and other garments rather than following the seasonal calendar the fashion industry favours so much. “The way I look at my work is more like an ongoing process, less like an end result,” Zhou explains. “The garments I make are quite sculptural with extreme silhouettes, they look unreal and definitely trigger something in people. Many think they’re unwearable for the everyday world, and so, in that sense, they’re not really suited for business as usual. But on the internet, people want to be different. Or, rather, they’re free to be themselves.”

“The people who like what I do, they do like my dresses but wouldn’t necessarily wear them in the context of daily life.” – Terrence Zhou

The beauty of the online world is that there is someone out there who, too, dares question what precisely makes up clothing — and those are the ones Terrence gets to connect with. And for the ones who end up scrolling the designer’s feed, finding themselves pleased by what they see, but would like a slightly less eccentric, more wearable piece for the everyday; Bad Binch is for them. From the designer’s ready-to-wear line, if we may put it this way, the hoop dresses and skirts, as well as the broad-brim hat, have become firm favourites of his followers.

“The people who like what I do, they do like my dresses but wouldn’t necessarily wear them in the context of daily life. Hence, that’s why I started Bad Binch as I don’t think my work would be financially feasible otherwise. It’s a balance between creativity and commerce,” says Terrence. “Anyone who gets to come to my place, though, obviously wants to try on the craziest things I’ve made, and post a picture of it online.”