Bode has left the Lower East Side in favor of late 18th century Spain. Emily Adams Bode Aujla lent her design talents to Little Island’s production of The Marriage of Figaro, bringing her Americana flair to the classic opera.
Whether she’s dreaming up a beaded flapper dress or a clown suit costume, Bode Aujla always designs with a specific person in mind. So, for her, the process of creating the Figaro costumes wasn’t a far cry from designing the collections that have earned her a cult following. “My collections are largely inspired by personal narratives. I often think about people that are in my life currently, and they serve as muses—whether that’s my husband or my friend Kurt from college. There’s certain people in my life that have always been inspiring figures for me,” she says. “With the opera costumes, I don’t think I necessarily am thinking about the wearability in the day-to-day, but it still has that more imagination and muse idea of memory and thinking about things.”
Bode Aujla views the fashion show as a cousin of stage performance, which helped prepare her for the world of live theater. “Our shows are like tableau vivant. It really is creating an entire memory-evoking idea, similar to theater. It usually involves scent or music,” she says. Little Island’s producing artistic director Zack Winokur thought of Bode Aujla for the costuming because of her emphasis on storytelling. “Every time I see her collections, every time she talks about the work that she does, it’s all story. It seems a natural fit for her to enter the theater,” he tells Vogue. “Because she’s so historically informed and really interested in narrativizing, and putting her own mark on historical style, [I thought] that this would be a really fun assignment for her, and I think she knocked it out of the park.”
A designer known for her extensive, in-depth references, Figaro proved an opportunity for Bode Aujla to conduct research overseas. “I’ve been in Paris a lot the last few months for work because we were looking quite a lot at French costumes. I bought a folio from the 1920s, but it’s of French clothing of the late 1700s,” she says. As opposed to the break-neck speed of preparing a runway show, Bode Aujla relished the time she was able to spend researching for the Little Island production. “I could expend energy on doing all of that research, knowing that I want to utilize a candy stripe or a stripe for the Countess, and then looking at other stripes that are in museum collections,” she says. “I want to focus more of my energy because I feel like it makes my team and myself better at our jobs.”
While much of the cast wears sailor slop suits and period-appropriate garb, Bode’s DNA is all over the costumes, from the tomato-red clown suit with the delicate lace collar to the floral-printed frock and the brocade overcoat. And, just like with any of Bode’s ready-to-wear pieces, expect thoughtful details like pearl and metallic trim and antique textile cuffs. “It looks like historically informed garments that people would be really happy to wear right now,” Winokur says.
