EMILY ADAMS BODE
BODE
‘The taste for collecting has always been in my family,’ explains Emily Adams Bode. ‘My earliest memories are summer mornings spent in flea markets in my native Atlanta and Cape Cod, where we used to spend the holidays.’ A Parsons School of Design graduate, Adams Bode started experimenting with vintage fabrics in class. ‘Building a brand based on the same idea just seemed like a natural progression,’ she says.
Her collections – designed for men but co-opted by women – are workwear-inspired patchworked explorations of domestic textiles ‘traditionally made by women for the home: linen, tablecloths, curtains and, of course, quilts’. Those fabrics, sourced in flea markets in the US and Paris, account for 40 per cent of Bode’s collections. The rest is sourced and manufactured in New Delhi, India, reproducing historical Indian textiles using mainly handwoven cotton.
For S/S20, Bode headed to Paris for her very first show, with a collection inspired by her ancestors. ‘My grandfather’s great-great uncle was a wagon manufacturer and, for a number of years, he worked on commissions from the Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus.’ Working with the circus archives, the designer came up with a colourful collection of corduroy shorts, crochet tops and a showstopping suit made entirely out of 1970s horse ribbons. ‘It was just this really beautiful thing to make,’ says Bode. bodenewyork.com