Two weeks after winning the CFDA Award for Emerging Designer of the Year, Emily Adams Bode has ticked off another major achievement: her first-ever runway show, scheduled into one of the first slots of Men’s Fashion Week in Paris. It took place in a proper, peaceful part of the 16th arrondissement inside a grand townhouse recently vacated by the Netherlands delegation of the OECD. These particulars help underscore the huge geographic and cognitive leap from her deliberately homespun presentations in downtown New York. The leap gets larger still when factoring in the time she spent researching this collection at the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, Florida.
The circus storyline that emerged wasn’t arbitrary—and it certainly wasn’t some meta-critique on the state of fashion today. As she explained backstage, ever since launching her craft-centric menswear label nearly three years ago, she has been waiting for the right moment (i.e. sufficient resources) to assemble a collection inspired by her familial ties to a bygone wagon workshop based in Cincinnati that produced ornate creations for Barnum & Bailey and the Ringling Brothers.
And so, out came her big-top characters dressed in creative adaptions of classic workwear, throwback sportswear, and miscellaneous flamboyance. They moved achingly slow in extroverted stylings of color and print, appearing rigid when they could have been animated. Still, they got the point across that Bode is a worthy, independent outlier.
Indeed, if the American-designer-in-Paris conceit has been playing out with greater frequency lately, Bode’s statement felt so idiosyncratic that it could transcend whatever backdrop imposed upon it. This was evident from the first look, a duster coat whose noble stripe might have lined the walls of an 18th-century French salon, to what seemed like horse ribbons pieced together as pants. As a significant departure from previous seasons—and one that will prove essential in scaling up her business—basically all the textiles that looked vintage were now convincing reproductions. But here were also plenty of pieces in standard materials: a crisp belted jumpsuit, a welding jacket in saffron suede or bi-color jersey pants. “It’s about being able to tell that narrative of the historical techniques and fabrications and then [figuring out] how we can bring this to market in larger way,” she said, delivering a perfect synthesis that would please LVMH Prize judges (she’s a finalist) and buyers alike.
With its patchwork jackets, crochet ensembles, and ballet slippers, this gentle exploration of past and present was certainly original if not flawless. Ironically, such wistfulness can start to feel limiting; yet perhaps it’s a question of context. Swap one of the rake-thin models for a basketball player—Rudy Gay and P. J. Tucker among today’s guests—and Bode’s thoughtful clothes would come alive in a whole new way.
