A new womenswear line that will make you want to party

The 10,000 sq ft Bode studio in Brooklyn is stuffed to the ceiling with antique quilts, salvaged textiles and vintage checked tablecloths. But on the edge of one rail, amid this sea of pastel fabrics that will be turned into patchwork jackets and trousers, hangs a sparkly double-breasted overcoat. It glints, as if a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

“It was intentional to do something very different for women,” says Emily Adams Bode Aujla, of the sequinned garment from her debut womenswear collection. Unveiled in Paris in January, the collection of heavily embellished, 1920s-inspired eveningwear is a visual evolution from the whimsical, often folksy menswear pieces with which she has become synonymous: think camp collar shirts in crochet and lace (from £590, bode.com), A-line shorts trimmed with colourful blanket-stitch (£465) or sweatshirts embroidered with farmyard animals (£530). These menswear pieces are a love letter to handcraft: much of the collection is made in America by small, artisanal workshops using traditional techniques.

The brand — pronounced “boh-dee” — started small in 2016, but its impact is reverberating across fashion today. The label’s predilection for boxy silhouettes and stitch technique is distinctive and now much copied. Clients include Jeff Goldblum, Harry Styles and the architect John Pawson, while Emma Corrin owns some of the brand’s crocheted button-ups and playfully embroidered woollen coats. Last year, Bode Aujla took home the CFDA’s Menswear Designer of the Year award.

The business has gathered pace rapidly. It now employs a staff of 100, based in a former warehouse in South Williamsburg. In 2019 it opened the first Bode store on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and this was followed in 2021 by a Bode coffee bar/tailor’s atelier and a 3,000 sq ft Los Angeles outpost on Melrose Avenue in 2022. London and Paris are slated to follow.

The label’s long-awaited women’s collection was expected to be a recalibrated version of the men’s — with hemlines and sleeve lengths shrunk to female proportions. Not so.

“It would have been really easy to do that . . . and from an economic standpoint, it would have been more effective,” says Bode Aujla, sitting in her studio office, her desk cluttered with trinkets and vases. Many women’s brands are helmed by men, but Bode Aujla was the first female designer to show on the New York Fashion Week men’s schedule in 2017. “When I started Bode, it was about utilising traditional female craft made for and by women, and making men’s clothing out of it . . . There would have been no concept to offer exactly the same thing for women,” she says. “Plus, half of our clients already are women. What would be the point?”

Instead, she has set her sights on the female wardrobe largely via eveningwear. It’s a brave move, considering the increased casualisation of fashion over the past three years: sweatpants forever, this is not. “It wasn’t necessarily what our buyers wanted,” she laughs, of the exquisite beaded tops and asymmetric skirts that wouldn’t look out of place in a remake of The Great Gatsby or on the set of Downton Abbey. “They all ask for daytime wear.”

Eveningwear will allow her to become more of a mainstay on the Hollywood circuit — many of her celebrity clients had been requesting red-carpet looks. Bode doesn’t pay for advertising and the publicity generated from events such as the Met Gala and the Cannes Film Festival is, for many young brands, critical.

Her first red-carpet foray was dressing Lorde for the 2021 Met Gala in a custom white skirt and open shirt decorated with cabochons that, from a distance, looked like ancient coins. The singer wore elongated slippers on her feet and a big crown on her head. It was ethereal, a bit strange and out of time — like some medieval princess. The finished costume formed the blueprint of the new women’s line. “It was like, ‘That’s our girl. That’s what she wants to wear and what she cares about.’”

Which is what, exactly? Bode Aujla thinks her woman is elegant and likes rituals — she wants clothes with a story; she dresses to please herself and is “inspired by the theatrics and experience of it”. Bode Aujla says she was inundated with requests to remake Lorde’s dress. More red-carpet looks have followed. This May, she dressed the designer Aurora James for the Met Gala in a custom, tassel-trimmed gown made from salvaged French curtain fabric. Layered over it was a sharp yellow Bode blazer that riffed on the canary coat Karl Lagerfeld won the Woolmark Prize with in 1954.

The debut women’s collection — aligned in price, craft and production with the men’s — references a real-life ninetysomething woman who lived on an estate in Cape Cod in the 1970s. She dressed in 1920s frocks to eat alone in her formal dining room each night — Bode Aujla’s mother Janet worked for her. “She wasn’t just grabbing a quick dinner and eating to survive like we do today,” Bode Aujla says. “She was savouring this moment, just for herself.”

Many of the creations riff on actual flapper dresses from Bode Aujla’s personal collection. She likes to imagine the histories of “who wore it, and to where”. And that’s why eveningwear excites her. People remember what they wore for events. “It’s the milestones in people’s lives,” she says. A butter-coloured tuxedo dress, cut from beautiful brocade, was designed with civil weddings or official occasions in mind. “When I was getting married, I couldn’t find anything I liked,” she says. (She married her business partner, Aaron Aujla, last year).

The company is privately owned by the pair, who declined to share sales and profit figures. While other young brands in this tough economic climate might ride the wave of their popularity, Bode is strategically shrinking its wholesale accounts — despite the womenswear opening the brand up to more stockists.

If Bode Aujla’s impact on menswear is a guide, it will be interesting to watch how her aesthetic shapes the way women dress for occasions. Just as brands like Cecilie Bahnsen and Simone Rocha normalised flounce and frill for daytime, Bode Aujla may soon have us donning Daisy Buchanan-style drop-waisted dresses, scintillating headbands and opulent brocade blazers for dinner.

“The goal is to make something with meaning that you’ll have for ever,” she says, stroking a heavily ribboned overcoat that uses a technique ordinarily found in couture. She’s currently trying to produce it in a cost-effective way for ready-to-wear.

“I’m just trying to figure out what women get excited about.”

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