This September, Rotten Avocado Media, an NYC-based independent creative production company, presented 100 Ways to Get Here, an unconventional fashion show bringing together seven independent designers. Set in a raw industrial space in Brooklyn, the show was built around a simple idea: there is no single path to arrival. Each designer brought a distinct creative voice to this shared narrative.
For Ni Ouyang, Founder & Creative Director of Rotten Avocado Media, the idea grew from a desire to bring the characters and constant motion of New York into the traditional runway format. “I wanted to create something that felt less predictable and more alive. New York is full of people moving in their own ways, coming from different places and carrying their own experiences. It made me question something as familiar as the runway walk: Why does everyone have to enter the same way, follow the same path and arrive at the same point?”
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Ni sees fashion shows as more than presentations of clothing. For her, they can become spaces for storytelling, performance and visual experimentation. In 100 Ways to Get Here, the runway became a stage for unexpected entrances, expressive gestures and small moments of spontaneity, allowing the show to feel less prescribed and more fluid.
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This personal approach also carried into the projected visuals, which drew inspiration from Ni’s childhood in Shanghai, they revisit memories of sliding down the elephant slide in her neighborhood, paddling duck boats in ChangFeng Park, and hula hooping with childhood friends, small, vivid scenes that were once part of everyday life. Playful and nostalgic, these fragments of memory connect where she began with the many turns that eventually brought her to New York and to the creation of 100 Ways to Get Here.
“To me, the idea is about the choices and detours that shape where we end up. We may find ourselves in the same city, the same room, or even on the same runway, but the journey there is never quite the same. There may be one runway, but there is never only one way to get there.”
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Featured Designers
HER.I OFFICIAL: Founded by VV (Hanwei) Su, HER.I is a New York–based occasion wear house exploring heritage and identity through precise tailoring, sculptural silhouettes, and a refined sense of restraint, creating pieces that balance structure, femininity, and emotional presence.
For this runway, HER.I turns its gaze to the woman inside fashion: immaculate in presentation, yet moving through a world of speed, pressure, and controlled disorder. This duality extends the house’s central idea of HER and I, the self as perceived and the self as lived. In response to “A Hundred Ways to Get Here,” the collection draws on founder Hanwei Su’s own trajectory through the industry, exploring how ambition, cultural inheritance, and experience shape identity. Precision tailoring meets disrupted femininity, allowing polish and chaos to coexist.
TANYA TAN: Bridging the creative energy of London, Shanghai, and Los Angeles, Tanya Tan constructs a sanctuary for youth culture—a space honoring fluid identities, raw vulnerability, and subtle emotional unrest. Driven by the vivid individuals and communities in her orbit, the brand operates on a singular ethos: It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to.
MINDBLOWN is a NYC based streetwear brand that promotes individuality and environmentally conscious fashion practices. Founded in 2019, the brand focuses on quality, ethical production, and unconventional methods of garment-making to create unique and thoughtful work.
This NYFW SS27 collection is inspired by imperfection, messiness, whimsy, and fun– defying a culture that feels obsessed with perfection and bringing joy to a world of uncertainty. As always, the making process incorporated sustainable practices. Some of the up-cycled materials used were a vintage parachute, vintage denim, and dead stock fabrics. The collection connects to “100 Ways to Get Here” through the energy that models will bring to the runway. They will channel walking through the city as individual characters, each one a ‘hot mess’– late to an event or on their way home from a night out. Imperfect, chaotic, real.
Chunbo (Clark) Zhang is a NYC based designer working at the intersection of outdoor performance and experimental womenswear. Chunbo’s practice seeks to maximize the reciprocal relationship between the body and clothing, treating garments not as static coverings but as adaptive systems that respond to movement, environment, and everyday needs.
Prompted by the limited storage often found in womenswear, his six-look graduate collection explores how utility, functionality, and artistic expression can coexist. Magnetic connections, modular accessories, transformable structures, reflective piping, and lightweight, water-resistant technical fabrics allow garments to shift between wearing and carrying, protection and exposure. Inspired by cicada molting, translucent and tear-resistant materials evoke the fragile yet resilient shell left behind during transformation. This process connects the collection to 100 Ways to Get Here. Like a cicada growing beyond its former shell, arriving is understood as an ongoing process of adaptation, release, and renewal.
Opal’s Archive is a brand that touches on themes of memory and sentimentality, prioritizing the values of craft and detail. They are deeply inspired by their time working in a memory care facility, and the personal connections they have made with those in different stages of their life. In this collection, Opal explores the sentimentality of memory and living life, and how they paint the picture of someone as a whole. Opal uses themes of dementia and memory loss to portray portraits of humanity. The human experience is made up of memories, and as we live our lives, we become a portrait of everything that we have experienced. Forgetting does not have to mean we lose ourselves, because every memory is a step in our life paths. The emotional connection is shown through textile exploration, usage of donated vintage items and dead stock fabric, and layers of sheer fabric which can be pulled back to showcase what’s beneath.
T1L FURTHER NOTICE was born during a particularly difficult chapter in my life. There was a time when I felt deeply misunderstood and unsupported, while constantly being asked when the brand would finally come to life. That uncertainty became part of the identity itself. T1L FURTHER NOTICE is a reminder that there is no perfect moment to start the journey. The collection brings together our commercial pieces with experimental editorial designs. The commercial pieces represent what we know we want to bring into the world. The editorial pieces in the collection represent another side of that journey: exploration without certainty. Some of these pieces began without knowing exactly how they would ultimately look or perform. As elements such as boning and fishbone-like structures are woven into the fabrics, the material begins to respond in its own unexpected ways. The final form only reveals itself through the process of making. In that sense, these pieces embody the same philosophy behind the collection: You experiment, you adjust, you keep going, and eventually, something takes shape. I was learning as I went. 100 Ways to Get Here is about getting knocked down, choosing to stand back up, and move forward without knowing exactly how.
Yi Li is a NYC based designer whose practice begins with personal observations and lived experience, translating the intimate into form through an intuitive, hands-on process. Moving between draping, material experimentation, and research, she embraces the tension between structure and spontaneity, allowing unexpected discoveries in the making process to shape the work. Her collection Nowhere Everywhere considers belonging not as a fixed destination, but as something formed through movement, disruption, and the gradual act of inhabiting a space. Containers, from suitcases and bags to garments themselves, become both physical objects and metaphors for the structures through which we carry, organize, and locate ourselves. Drawing from experiences of moving between places and inhabiting temporary spaces, Li considers how order gradually gives way to accumulation, and how the provisional can begin to feel like home. Li’s work proposes that arrival is rarely a singular moment or a straight path. Sometimes, getting “here” happens through disorientation. Structures loosen, boundaries break open, and what initially appears unsettled becomes the beginning of belonging.
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Credits
Presented By: ROTTEN AVOCADO MEDIA @rottten_avocadoo
Founder / Creative Director / Executive Producer: Ni Ouyang
Fashion Designer:
MINDBLOWN NYC
HER.I
Tanya Tan
Chunbo Zhang
Opal’s Archive
T1L FURTHER NOTICE
Yi Li
Casting Director / Associate Producer: Wenshi Wang Stylist & Runway Director: Tianyun Lan Stage Manager: Shuran He Lighting Director: Chloe Ge
Gaffer: Nian Li
Lighting Tech: Ian Alvarezward, Ethan Chiem, Genre Wu, Juky, Christian Gomez ,Oscar Chen Visual Artist & Creative Tech: Lin Feng
Creative Tech & PA: Chuwei Zheng Makeup Artists:
Gabriela Madrid, Jazmin Lambert , Jess Xing, Emma Rabinowitz, Shenay, Jaythemua Hair Stylists: Katie Malyn, Koree Woodley-Adjei, Francheska Nieves, Madeline Robitaille, Jessica heaven, Jess Graziano DP: Lucy Yiqin Li
Camera OP: Zixuan Wang, Kailyn Runway DJ: S7ik , After Party DJ: Anastasia Holmes Runway Photographer: Lexie Zhang
Backstage Photographers: Aqua Rose, Lisa Xing Chen, Arleth Pando, Stef Murza, Bing, Heather Bloomfield, Annie, CC PA: Marcus, Vale Ordoñez EQ Sponsor : YITUO Studio, Pytol Image Darkroom
In partnership with APG
