THE MAKING OF THE NEXT GREAT AMERICAN FASHION DESIGNER

She exploded onto the fashion scene and seemingly changed the way men dress overnight. But Emily Adams Bode Aujla’s brand is not just lace shirts and patchwork pants. It’s about thinking of clothes as heirlooms—and building a family business that will last.

- Samuel Hine

 

HIGH ABOVE Canal Street in New York's Chinatown neighbourhood, the early spring sun is shining through antique lace curtains. Emily Adams Bode Aujla is sitting on a velvet-cushioned couch in her former apartment, which she and her husband, the interior designer Aaron Aujla, recently vacated.

The airy loft is now the latest expansion of the Bode-verse: the brand's new fine-tailoring studio, where clients can get fitted for suiting and other custom garments. This is in addition to Bode's NYC flagship store around the corner and a smaller tailor shop next door; The River, a Bode-fied bar Emily and Aaron co-own close by; a 3,000-square-foot shop in Los Angeles; and several planned retail stores elsewhere in the world. The stores all stock Bode's rapidly expanding and evolving ready-to-wear collections, which are richly considered explorations of material culture, guided by Emily's family histories. Hanging alongside are the brand's famous one-off pieces that reveal fecund seams of bygone craft, in the form of shirts made of hand-mended French linens and coats cut from mid-century plaid blankets.

Emily and Aaron lived in this apartment for nearly five years before opting to move to a quiet block in the West Village. The hand-operated elevator in the building began to feel impractical with a baby on the way. But the renovations on the new place aren't done, and while Aaron visits clothing factories in India, Emily is staying in a hotel. "Couldn't I just sleep here?" Emily, 34, says of the old place. "Because it does still feel like my apartment."