Just as Emily Bode Aujla found womenswear uninteresting during her college years, it had been a while since I’d found inspiration in fashion itself.
With the exception of the industry’s brief intermission during the pandemic, I’ve often felt that fashion in the age of public acquisition has been overwhelmed by a desperate need for attention, from the mechanical rollout of collections to all the de rigueur publicity stunts made to spur a brand’s virality.
Before I’d first spotted Bode’s work—a vibrant patchwork jacket that caught my eye from a Hester Street shop window in New York—fashion felt increasingly meaningless, precisely because all I could see was the business beneath its seams. Seven years since she launched her namesake label, however, Bode has instilled my faith in clothing as a way to tell stories and impart history.
Amid menswear’s current preoccupation with tech fabrics and fluid dressing, Bode’s gone its own way, imbuing a unique sense of character and identity into its clothing. Be it through antique fabrics or substantial knits featuring evocative pictures or patterns, a shirt or pair of trousers reflects the charm of being passed down from a previous generation, or the luck in stumbling across a flea market find. Each piece feels collectible, yes, but looks joyously independent from the notion of a “collection.”
For Bode’s recent foray into womenswear, the same principle seems to apply. The difference is that the designer’s process is now a little more personal, drawing from her own life and muses. Particularly, the women in her family and the tales they’ve told.
Launching her womenswear line during Paris men’s fashion week recently, Bode named the collection “The Crane Estate.” It’s a reference to a Cape Cod manor that left a lasting mark on her mother, who in the 1970s worked for the eccentric lady of the estate. Prone to “extreme, idiosyncratic behaviors,” this grand dame was a character straight out of a Gatsby novel, often donning 1920s gowns and jewelry only to dine alone.
