Designer Emily Bode is settling into her footing. “I feel like I’m finding myself more. I look at old collections and I still see myself, but I feel like now I’m finding who I am within the industry a bit more, and then, who my guy is,” she said.
Last season she used Aaron Aujla, owner of Green River Project, as a reference point, and it was Aujla‘s introduction to gallerist Todd Alden, who specializes in ephemera art, that gave way to this season’s personal narrative, with Bode taking a look back at Alden’s childhood — he was an avid collector of baseball cards and pennies — and his time at Williams College.
Turns out Alden and Bode shared a similar sentiment to collecting things. “As a kid you travel around and save things; I used to save sugar packets and napkins,” she said with a laugh. Bode brought the past to life at her presentation, set up like a John Hughes flick, complete with her childhood friend playing covers of The Replacements — a band from the early Eighties and considered one of the founders of alt rock.
Bode Men's Fall 2019
21 Photos
The ephemeral and collecting bits and bops played out in her treatments, like a photo transfer of baseball cards done onto a mix of pieces, and styling that pushed an Eighties prep school vibe with oversize cardigans and corduroy pieces with college doodles on some jackets and pants.
Denim offered a new category for the designer, who bought deadstock yardage from some American mills, all of which have since closed, and repurposed it into studded yet simple pieces, like a zip up jacket. The Boy Scouts were another reference point.
The collection felt like Bode’s most inventive yet, and she continues to find her own way of translating nostalgia into covetable and personal pieces.