Emily Bode Is GQ’s 2019 Breakthrough Designer of the Year
Check out the rest of GQ's first annual Fashion Awards, honoring the designers, brands, and trends that made the biggest impact in 2019.
“It was quite a surreal experience,” Emily Adams Bode says about winning the CFDA Emerging Designer of the Year award in June, when she joined a list of winners that includes some of the most recognizable names in fashion today: Marc Jacobs, Rick Owens, Alexander Wang. Things got more surreal two weeks later, when she showed her fledgling brand, Bode, at Paris Fashion Week.
Emily, modest almost to a fault, says that one of the greatest milestones of her year was that fans of the label finally started pronouncing it correctly: BOH-dee, an important detail, considering her brand is inspired by family histories and heirlooms. But Paris presented the greatest challenge of her young career. “[At New York Fashion Week] you can kind of do whatever you want,” she said recently over green tea near her Chinatown studio. “In Paris”—with the weight of a schedule stacked with America’s greatest living designers—“you can’t. But we had to make it as Bode as possible.”
The event, a full-scale runway show in a 16th arrondissement townhouse, was downright ceremonial compared to her crowd-favorite New York presentations, which usually had the vibe of an art-kid apartment party. But the delicate crochet tops, sentimental crocheted knits, and ensembles made of horse-show ribbons that hung off the models had as much soul as the one-of-a-kind quilted jackets Emily used to sew in her tiny Lower East Side apartment, where she founded the brand a mere three years ago. Wavy garments that deepen one’s connection to American craftsmanship? That’s as Bode as possible.
Beyond the accolades are the hints of what the brand could be in a few more years: “Bode is the stuff that I always wanted to wear. It’s like an American version of Visvim,” says a fan known as A$AP Ferg, who has amassed a tiny collection of Bode shirts made of sheer doily and embroidered silk. (Harry Styles is the latest celeb to catch the Bode bug.) Crucially, it is winning at retail in the post-streetwear landscape. This season, Bode is available in some 75 stores. The Paris collection will deliver to 100+ stores, plus the most important one of all: the first Bode retail location, which opened in November on Hester Street. “I’ve wanted a store since I was little,” Emily says. So what’s her goal for 2020? Continuing, amidst expansion and accolades, to emphasize what Bode means: “It’s about things that have an emotive quality,” Emily says. “It’s about discovering why we find intangible joy in old things.”
A version of this story originally appeared in the December/January 2020 issue with the title "Breakthrough Designer of the Year: Emily Adams Bode."
Menswear is now the electric energy source at the center of the fashion universe, so we're honoring the designers, brands, and trends that made the biggest impact in 2019.
Originally Appeared on GQ
