For autumn-winter 2023, Bode is back on the runway, and back in Paris. But there’s also a debut coming from Emily Adams Bode Aujla: a gorgeous womenswear line. At the Theatre du Chatelet, her American family storytelling took place. The models came out of the house and walked stage left, close enough so that every detail of the embroidery and embellishment could be appraised close up. There was a lot of it, and it looked great, from edging men’s suits to decorated with gold and green beads flapper dresses. The Bode program notes spoke about how the designer looked for inspiration to her mother’s side of the family – the four Rice sisters. Janet, her mom, had a college job in the 1970s on the Crane Estate at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, with a 90-year-old lady who kept to the old social formalities of her class, and would descend for dinner in dresses which went back to the 1890s through the 1940s. Somehow, that story got mixed up with Emily’s memories of family life, from every day dressing to celebrations over the years. By the time a dress came out that was clearly a Christmas tree, hung with baubles, the Parisian crowd was won over. Most of all, the success of the show was to prove what a range Bode has as a brand. The gliterry shimmy dresses apart, she also pulled out some drop-dead American-glamour 1930s/‘40s evening dresses in emerald green sequins or red velvet. On top of that, her all-gendered, novelty-type knits are already real stand-outs in stores. If Ralph Lauren is looking for a successor, Emily Bode Aujla is the right person to reach out to.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
For autumn-wineter 2022, Emily Adams Bode-Aujla pushes her signature style even further, delivering a collection that showed a more daring and experimental side of her blooming menswear brand. Each Bode collection is like a lesson in history of both, America’s culture, and the designer’s personal one. Last season, the she sought inspiration in her wedding to her longtime partner Aaron Aujla, so it’s not surprising that this season the designer was thinking back to where it all began: the former apartment-studio on Clinton Street in the Lower East Side. “I lived there over seven years, and it was the place in which I started Bode,” the designer recalled. “A lot of my friends called it ‘the treehouse’ because it was seven flights up, and then it had another staircase up even further, and then this funny little makeshift roof deck also had another level.” The most obvious way that youthful inspiration was reflected in the collection was the skeleton suit onesie, which was a nod to the costume parties she threw at the apartment back in the day. But what Adams Bode-Aujla does best is capture history through objects, and for this collection, she revisited her archive as well as things she had done as one-offs for her first collection. “There were pieces that I had collected that I felt I couldn’t reproduce in the way that I have always wanted to do until now,” she explained. Out of all the collections she has done until now, this is the richest one in materials, embroidery, techniques, borne of supreme confidence in one’s abilities and an innate love of craft. A shirt embroidered with teeny beads in bold colors in a mid-century modern floral pattern seemed precious enough to live underneath glass in a museum, but here it was worn casually underneath a patchworked blue and white suit. Delicate openwork crocheted lace was used in long sleeve button down blouses in cream or in a multi-color offering that would be finely suited for any number of formal occasions. It’s this season’s outerwear that made the strongest initial impression: a cream “teddy bear” coat with three buttons and a beaded rope tied around the waist was based on a children’s coat Adams Bode-Aujla kept along with the rest of the childrenswear in her special collection, in an aluminum box possibly used during WWII to store film. A boxy jacket covered in shiny black sequins with long fringe detail at the bottom had origins as part of a woman’s evening skirt suit from the 1970s or ’80s that the designer often wore around the apartment. Two red fringed jackets, one short and one long, were the poster children for the sort of circularity that only exists in Bode’s collections. “I had this 1920s-ish dress with fringe, but it was actually made from upholstery fringe, like someone had made the dress as a costume in the 1960s,” she explained. In her hands it became an elegant take on a duster coat in 2022. It’s this wonderful circle of life that keeps Adams Bode-Aujla – and her loyal fans – excited.
Collage by Edward Kanarecki. Don’t forget to follow Design & Culture by Ed on Instagram!
Autumn-winter 2021 marks the first collection Bode has shown since lockdown, though it’s technically spring (arriving in stores this month) and autumn rolled together. For the occasion, Emily Bode invited New York-based editors into what appeared to be a teenage boy’s 1960s bedroom, preserved in all its clutter. Newspapers and LIFE magazines were scattered on the tables; a vintage Monopoly set was splayed on the floor; desks were pinned with comic strips and old photos; and, of course, there were clothes everywhere: spilling out of a hamper, piled on the floor, dangling from coat hooks, draped over the bed. Each item was painstakingly arranged by Bode and her team, but it was a convincing replica of her uncle Bill’s college dorm room at the University of Vermont (or at least Bode’s impression of it, based on his recollection). In 1969, he tricked his parents into thinking he was back at school when in fact he was taking a year off to explore the East Coast, race cars, and play games. Bode explained it was also the last year before Bill’s wife, Mahri, came into the picture; they met in 1970, married, and were together up until 2019, when Mahri passed away. Suddenly, 2020 was Bill’s first “year off” from the life he knew, and he found himself reminiscing about 1969 again. Bode related his story of love, loss, and reflection to our own “year off” during the pandemic. Sifting through the piles, you could find all the familiar Bode-isms: silk button-downs with prints lifted from vintage postcards and handkerchiefs; embroidered camp shirts that are the expert work of Indian artisans; patchworked merino suits, an evolution of her quilted jackets; and her most refined knits yet, from a space-dyed pullover to a stunning hand-crocheted cardigan. A few pieces nodded to Bill and Mahri, like a souvenir jacket with a pug embroidered on the back, while others seemed happily arbitrary: an intarsia’d camel sweater, a pair of shorts chain-stitched with line drawings and funny phrases, a sweater crocheted with 3-D grapes. A small group of tailored pieces trimmed with rows of real pearl buttons spoke to Bode’s particular passion for preserving crafts and techniques. She bought them in bulk from a closed-down button factory in the Midwest, and pointed out how each was individually hand-carved, hand-sanded, and one-of-a-kind. They may have been thrown away or relegated to some dusty warehouse if Bode hadn’t purchased them; the same could be said of the quilts, table cloths, and scraps of fabric piling up in her Brooklyn studio.
If it’s tempting to lump Bode in with other “sustainable” or “upcycled” brands, it’s actually more of a coincidence that some of her materials – not all – were already made. Bode cares about sustaining traditions and stories, not just reducing her carbon footprint, and she understands her role as an employer. She couldn’t have scaled her business to its current size if she hadn’t found a pragmatic, sustainable way to mass-produce certain garments with new materials, like her camp shirts and chore jackets, nor would she have been able to hire her teams of craftspeople in India, Peru, and New York (many designers canceled their orders in Garment District factories during the pandemic, but Bode made it a point to support them.) Bode’s brand-new tailoring shop, located next to her flagship in the formerly-turquoise Classic Coffee Shop, is a more apt reflection of her sustainability ethos. Her tailors will alter your brand-new Bode suit or mend an old quilted jacket. Even if you just picked up your first Bode shirt next door, there’s a comfort in knowing you don’t have to be precious about wearing it; when the time comes, someone will be there to fix it up. On the long list of things that separate Bode from her peers (and her many imitators) is that she absolutely intends for her clothes to be worn – and would rather fix the hole in your shirt than sell you a new one.
One of New York’s biggest menswear talents, Emily Bode, charmed the Paris audience with her autumn-winter 2020 line-up. The Education Of Benjamin Bloomstein sounds like a title straight out of a Wes Anderson film; and in aesthetic terms the director and Bode’s designer create similarly winsome worlds. Years before Bloomstein and the designer became friends and collaborators (through his design studio, Green River Project LLC), he had an idiosyncratic upbringing that made him an obvious protagonist for the ongoing Bode narrative. Briefly, as related in the collection text, he attended schools in a former Shaker village and on a biodynamic farm; he wrote poetry and immersed himself in agriculture; and perhaps most pertinent, he figured out how to alter his school clothes so that they would feel more comfortable. In adapting Bloomstein’s memories to her exploration of craft methods and sustainable values, Bode delivered a beautiful and whimsy collection. Her sentimental nods to the past included a quilted jacket and matching mittens that signaled outerwear from pre-duvet times; outfits covered in deadstock souvenir and achievement patches; shirts embroidered with farm animals and vintage athletic jerseys; delicate seed bead ornaments and necklaces strung with hand-blown marbles. Four years into her brand, Emily navigates the trap of historical costume by shaking up how she presents her repurposed and reproduced textiles and trims (be it the equine blankets that were the basis for the opening tailored look or the golden Appenzeller Gurt charms adorning various looks as well as the label’s new line of slip-ons). Big love.
Two weeks after winning the CFDA Award for Emerging Designer of the Year, Emily Adams Bode has another major achievement behind her belt: her first-ever Bode runway show, in Paris, not in New York. That’s a smart move. Men’s New York fashion week has an extremely low visibility, while Bode, a brand that possibly has the brightest, sustainability-forward concept behind it in the entire industry, needs a fair spotlight. The label’s off-kilter pieces reinterpret antique quilts and domestic textiles in a workwear context to create new narratives. Each collection harmonises disparate elements, repairing and preserving materials that would otherwise be lost, thrown away. The designer produces modern heirlooms that nod to folkloric craftsmanship with hand-stitched accents and panelled constructions. For spring-summer 2020, Bode focuses on the same idea, but with a different background. As she explained backstage, ever since launching her menswear label three years ago, she has been waiting for the right moment to present a collection inspired by her familial ties to a bygone wagon workshop based in Cincinnati that produced ornate creations for Barnum & Bailey and the Ringling Brothers. “It’s about being able to tell that narrative of the historical techniques and fabrications and then [figuring out] how we can bring this to market in larger way,” she added. An intricately embroidered coat or a suede jacket with hand-stitched florals might have been the nods to her season’s reference. The clothes that impress with detailing were put together with Bode’s classics – vintage-y, short-sleeved shirts, striped, cropped pants, over-sized overalls. I’m a huge fan of Bode and its philosophy, and it’s not the first time when I’m saying this. Big hopes for winning the LVMH Prize in a couple of days!
Design & Culture by Ed 