By Tang Ziya Rena (27A01B) and Tu Meiyi Mary (27S06O)

All photos courtesy of Skyler Chen Yuanzhe (27S03A), Esther Ho Yee Yeow (27S03B), Ayyaatharan Srinivasan (26S06D), Zhu Taiwu (26S06K),  Kylie Chong (26S03E), Kaylea Tan Kai Xuan (26A01E)

If you had been anywhere near the Multi-Purpose Hall (MPH) on the 25th of May, you may have spotted crowds of students (and even a few teachers) milling about the entrance of the hall with bouquets of fresh flowers in tow. 

While this sight is indeed not out of the ordinary, but rather, highly characteristic of most in-school performance events, you, the ever-observant onlooker, might have noticed something that sets this one apart from the others.

That was—that the people there appeared to be slightly better dressed than the typical attendee profile of school events. 

If that indeed was the case, that may be because this was Reverie, Raffles Runway’s 2026 RPROJ Showcase. 

Dimmed lights. A retro TV nestled in the centre of a runway, stars speckled all around. At the head of it all, on the stage stood a beautiful arch draped in long, flowy, iridescent fabric. 

Attendees settled into their seats, dreamy ambient music resounding from the MPH’s surround speakers, as the sun’s remaining rays streaked through the windows and a looped animation flickered on the retro TV.

Road to Reverie

When asked what their inspiration was for choosing the theme ‘Reverie’, Runway chairperson Li Yueyi (Lee Guat Gee) (26S06B) shared, “All of us wanted to do our own thing for Reverie… As in, we didn’t really want to follow a theme. So instead of choosing a very specific theme that would restrict a lot of our creativity, we chose a very, very broad one.” 

Defined as a state of pleasant, dream-like thought, Reverie was selected specifically for its ambiguity. This served the designers well in their ideation process, offering them near total artistic liberty. 

Inspirations for the outfits ranged from strawberry shortcake to butterflies, kaleidoscopes, jellyfish, Venus flytraps, scaly fish, and even Backrooms lore. (Interestingly, we noted that a surprisingly significant number of designers cited marine life, fish in particular, as inspiration.) 

Despite the diverse and eclectic array of designs, the designers managed to weave them together (no pun intended) into a cohesive narrative for the showcase. The show was split into two acts, dawn and dusk, with the outfits progressing from light to dark as designs shifted from lighter, airier and brighter concepts to darker, more vibrant and brooding.

Timed to correspond with the time of the day, the models for the dawn collection were ushered out when it was still light out, and the subsequent dusk act only took to the runway once the sun had dipped from the sky, reflecting the gradual drift from reality into the dream world of Reverie.

Trouble Afoot

However, unlike the outfits (see: Shin Yee’s outfit by Guoran), not everything was sunshine and rainbows. 

The infamous $30 budget per outfit, for one, has always historically (your hint to check out the previous runway RPROJ showcase coverages where other past designers similarly bemoan this restriction) (wink wink) been a major challenge for the Runway designers to work with.

The moment we mentioned the word “budget” in our post-showcase interview, many of the designers instantly shared knowing smiles. 

One of the designers, Lia (Chen Yu Rong) (26S03O), leaned in to us conspiratorially, “Not in Chinatown. Oh my god. In Chinatown, the fabrics are actually, like, more expensive.” 

Lia, suddenly impassioned, continued: “They are actually scamming you. First of all, all the Chinatown vendors are secretly Taobao dropshippers in real life. It was like a scam, bro.” 

Yue Yi, on the other hand, had unfortunately fallen prey to the Chinatown fabric sellers. “I bought six yards of satin, and THAT was 30 bucks.” She grimaced. A momentary pause in the conversation followed her words as we let the moment pass for the money she had accidentally blown in Chinatown. 

Besides the budget, another factor that designers had to grapple with was the short runway (pun intended) of time they had to actually work on their designs. 

As the saying goes, time is money, and for Reverie, time proved almost as challenging as the latter. Since purchases made before January would not be reimbursed, most designers could only begin sourcing materials at the start of the year. 

“I can say that I procrastinated a lot,” admitted Lia, when asked about her design timeline. “I only bought most of my stuff in February, which was already quite late. And because I didn’t know that Chinese New Year affected Taobao, I didn’t get anything until early March.” She paused, “And then the photoshoot was 2 weeks away. So I had to cram a lot of things.”

Despite the hurdles, the designers were able to put the pedal to the metal as the deadlines loomed ever nearer and finish the final lap to complete their designs in time for the model photoshoots.

The Runway members’ past six months of effort had finally come into fruition, but their work didn’t end there. Behind the heavy green curtains, unseen by the audience, they were still fixing problems even as the clock ticked down to the start of the exhibition. 

For the Raffles Runway members, this event needed to go smoothly. After two years in the CCA, the annual showcase was not simply an opportunity to present their finished garments, but the culmination of weeks of experimentation and craftsmanship. Every stitch, redesign and late-night adjustment had led up to this moment.

And so one can imagine their anxiety after being told that the curtains would likely jam when operated. Having the curtains come to a jarring halt midway through a show that they had worked so hard to make as precise as possible was the last thing that anyone wanted.

“Yu Tong isn’t here [at the interview], but she was constantly crashing out about the curtains,” reflected Yue Yi, with reference to her close CCAmate Tan Yu Tong (26S03E), during our post-showcase interview. 

“There was a very high chance that the curtains could jam. So we barely touched it at all for rehearsals. I think we only closed it once. And then on the actual day itself, you saw us closing it for the second time ever.” 

As the curtains slowly slid along their rails, the members eyed it with wariness, watching for any signs of failure, but none surfaced. 

Thankfully, their fears were unfounded. With the curtains operating like butter, they could finally let out the breath they had been holding and relax…

Or not? Unfortunately for the Runway team, what can go wrong would go wrong. In this instance, it was the designer video that refused to cooperate. 

Thankfully, the team is nothing if not good at improvisation—clothes making is known to be an extremely unpredictable art, after all—and they jumped to fix it right away. While the rest of the team frantically tried to coax the video into playing, the two emcees (Yue Yi and Yu Tong) entertained the audience with some hilarious jokes.

That is exactly the spirit that Runway embodies: despite the individualistic nature of clothesmaking, the artists never fail to come together as a team when the situation calls for it. 

If we turned the clock back to before the showcase and headed to their preparation room, the sight would be a rather peculiar one. The stress was high, and so was the temperature, as 27 models and 25 members all crammed into a tiny J-block classroom. 

With these subpar conditions, one would expect some conflict to arise. And yet, the widespread stress seemed to only bring the members closer together. From sharing items without a word to helping each other’s models with makeup and hairstyling, the Runway members showcased what it meant to work as a well-oiled machine. Every member put their personal worries aside to ensure that everything was ready before the show started.

The models were no slackers either, fully cooperating with their designers to get their makeup, hairstyle and everything else done in time. This was, of course, one of the key characteristics that they had been selected for: how well they could work with the designers, as well as how confidently they could walk on stage. With how crucial the models are to the show, it is no wonder that the designers chose them carefully to match what the occasion called for. 

As the lights dimmed and the first model took the stage, the designers were filled with a mixture of feelings that no doubt left their stomachs rolling. Anxiety that something unexpected would ruin the show, pride at having their designs finally see the light of day, and relief that the past six months of work hadn’t been for nought.

“It’s delayed gratification,” Aishwariya Nagappan (26S03N) said. With two full months between finishing their designs in March and having them be showcased in May, it was easy for designers to feel that their hard work had been meaningless. Only when the showcase was over did the rush of dopamine hit and everything “finally click[ed]”, as Lia put it. 

For many of the designers, Runway had been a calling and not a choice. While some of them had come from an artistic background, few had actually worked with the fabric medium before. For Aishwariya, Runway was a way for her to get in touch with her artistic side and take a breather from the academics. 

As such, the Runway members are a unique group of people in more ways than one. They are a group of artists, each with their own vision for designs, who came together to share the joy of fashion design. And they made it work, each contributing to the CCA with their own unique skills. 

In fact, that was something that Yue Yi emphasised. “Stay true to yourself,” she said, “Be confident in your own vision and try not to compromise any part of your vision to conform to what other people are doing.” Especially in the artistic field, differences are what make you you. 

Lia and Aishwariya echoed the same sentiment, stating that instead of being stressed that you don’t match up to others’ standards, one should learn to appreciate differing perspectives whilst not compromising one’s own. 

Some other advice that the three designers gave was the age-old ‘avoid procrastination’, as well as not to get what they termed as ‘Runway Psychosis’. It is a phenomenon where a designer has been looking at their design for so long that they start seeing only the flaws in it. It can be debilitating for many designers’ self-esteem, potentially leading to meltdowns over the perceived mistakes in the design. 

Fortunately, the cure is simple and efficient: hang out with your fellow Runway friends, and have them look at your design with a fresh set of eyes. Oftentimes, what you construe as a glaring mistake doesn’t even register as one from the viewer’s point of view, and is just a figment of your imagination. 

As is often the case with artists, the Runway designers ultimately proved to be their own toughest critics. Judging from the resounding applause at the end of the showcase, however, we and the audience were clearly of one mind, concluding that the outfits had been absolutely spectacular. 

With that, the 2026 Runway RPROJ Showcase Reverie drew to a close. The memories made in its ethereal world, on the other hand, will be carried in the hearts of all who saw the showcase for what it was: a brilliant, dazzling display of passion and talent. Who knows? Maybe we’ll even dream about this moment sometime in the future. 

As the Runway team themselves quoted from The Truman Show: