This Super Bowl weekend, a subset of the city’s fashion crowd are trading New York for New Orleans. Not for the Chiefs vs Eagles NFL game, but for the inaugural GQ Bowl, host to Bode Rec.’s first runway show.
Bode Rec. is the activewear-focused line of New York brand Bode. You probably recognise the sub-brand from its splashy (and sold-out) Nike collaboration in April last year, which included knits, sneakers, athletic shorts and sweats. Now, founder and designer Emily Adams Bode Aujla is cementing Bode Rec.’s place alongside her main line. Bode Rec. pieces are priced below the main line (many items fall in the low to mid-hundreds), with some more elaborate pieces priced closer to Bode itself. The pieces are designed to be moved in, meaning sturdier fabrics that can be worn and washed time and time again.
When we speak, Adams Bode Aujla is gearing up for fittings at her WSA studio, before heading to Louisiana days before Friday night’s show. GQ editor-in-chief Will Welch approached Adams Bode Aujla directly about showing at GQ’s inaugural Bowl, which will be a “toast to the global symbiosis of sports and fashion”, host to a runway show and party, held at Hotel Peter and Paul in New Orleans. “He has such a vision for what makes a good moment around an existing moment,” she says. “He was very aware of how [Bode Rec.] has been one of the methods by which we’re expanding as a brand.”
That Rec.’s Nike collab was centred around football (a personal touch; Adams Bode Aujla’s father played in high school and college) made this the perfect moment for a runway debut. The designer is selective about when she puts on a runway show, this being Bode’s first since it launched womenswear in January 2023. “I feel like it’s best when there’s an intentionality behind it,” she says.
“When I launched women’s, I felt like there was such an important part of this idea of having a show to show the whole world view of what we were trying to create,” she says. Bode was launching to a new customer — women who weren’t necessarily the same women already buying (and wearing) Bode men’s. A year into Bode Rec., tonight’s runway is held with the same goal. “To be able to show on a runway with an event and music and energy, I think it’ll help shape a little bit more for people what this is that we’re working on,” Adams Bode Aujla says.
(Re)Introducing Bode Rec.
Bode Rec. is what Adams Bode Aujla refers to as Bode main line’s “underlying brand”. Going forward, it’ll sit alongside the core collection, but won’t necessarily always follow the same calendar, the designer says. “Bode Rec. is a line in and of itself,” she says.
It’s the right moment to go all in on sports, after what was perhaps fashion and sports’s biggest crossover year yet. But Rec. is a move informed by extensive research on Adams Bode Aujla’s part, dating back long before 2024 — through the past 200 years of American athleticwear. She notes the ways in which uniforms changed as TV shifted from black and white to colour. “That then changes the way in which the viewer is seeing these uniforms and also the make of the clothes,” she says. In 2025, she’s designing for clothing seen on the field, the street and on our screens. (The GQ Bowl will be live streamed on GQ.com and on YouTube.)
Materials-wise, too, we’re coming full circle, Adams Bode Aujla says, going back to natural materials that became “passé” relative to synthetics, but are naturally water-wicking and odour-preventing. The line uses materials like woven fabric ripstop, or washable merinos. “It’s going to always evolve, and I think that the fashion industry is going to continue to evolve with athletics,” she says. With Bode Rec., Adams Bode Aujla plans to play a part in this evolution of the two.
The brand’s first introduction was via Nike. It was a rare feat for Adams Bode Aujla, who rarely does collaborations. “Unless I can do it to the ability that I really want to do it, I won’t even entertain the idea,” she says. With Nike, she did just that: spoke to the company’s first employee, revived a then discontinued Astro Grabber sneaker and featured a high school photo of her dad on a Manhattan billboard.
Partnering with a brand like Nike was a bonus in education and access. “From a product perspective, for us to go into that world, we needed to experiment,” Adams Bode Aujla says. “We could learn so much from Nike by developing that footwear.” Many more Bode fans also gained brand access via the collab. “There’s no other world in which we could release that many units of a product,” she says. Plus, the price point was well below that of typical Bode footwear ($160 versus, say, $760 for the brand’s classic theatre shoe).
This is part of the ethos behind Bode Rec. It won’t all be in collaboration with Nike (though Adams Bode Aujla doesn’t rule out future collabs, with Nike and beyond). But it is more affordable than the initial Bode brand. While some items may still be costly, the majority of the collections will be at lower prices because of the durability and machine washability of the products, she adds.
Tonight’s runway exemplifies this mix. The show itself will feel like a parade — well suited to Nola (aka New Orleans) — playing on floats, outfits and costumes made for a commemorative occasion like a centennial, or a homecoming. “It’s a labour of love for the moment,” Adams Bode Aujla says. “That parade culture really plays into everything that I dream of and love for Bode, which is this idea of memory and tradition.”
To this end, Adams Bode Aujla won’t just be sending sweatsuits down the runway. (It is Bode, after all.) Alongside the more directly athletics-inspired garments, she’s also modelled pieces off of podium and medal ceremony attire. “We have fringe skirts and beading and sequins, because I think it’s really important to show that whole moment that we’re looking at.”
Building out the Bode world
Bode Rec. is the next step in building out the wider Bode world, which is fast approaching its 10-year anniversary (2025 marks nine years of the brand).
The approach to Rec. is not unlike that of the womenswear launch (though the women’s and men’s pieces sit under one collection — Rec. is separate). “The intention is that we’re building out the wardrobe for our guy or girl, our person who exists, but in doing so, we’re almost doubling that clientele,” explains Adams Bode Aujla.
The goal is to create pieces that existing Bode shoppers will want to add to their collections — but also to bring in a new shopper entirely. For Rec., this may be a more casual dresser. Adams Bode Aujla points to the Nike collab’s sell-out mesh jerseys and waxed-cotton zip-up jackets — a very different style than Bode’s usual tassled, printed and/or beaded pieces. “That’s a new guy,” she says of the Rec. shopper.
It’s also designed to bring in consumers who have long admired from afar. This, however, is a differentiator from the women’s launch, which offered products at a similar price point to the men’s garments. With Rec., fashion fans who have Bode on their mood boards — but lack the funds to purchase from the main line — can now participate in Bode’s brand world. Of the few pieces already available, a craft jacket costs $550, instead of $1,500-plus for main line style. A striped tee is $250; a singlet $180.
The dream scenario is for customers to dabble in and across Bode’s ranges, if they’re able. “I love dressing the whole family,” Adams Bode Auijla says. “You see mums and kids coming in, and spouses and boyfriends and husbands and whatever, but that’s the goal: to really flesh out this entire universe and to dress the entire family.”
This ties into Adams Bode Auijla’s priority as she approaches a decade of business: to flesh out not only what she believes the brand to be, but also how it’s perceived in the wider fashion landscape.
Bode is known for its vintage-inspired embroidered shirts (often made of actually vintage textiles) and quilted jackets. But over the brand’s nine years, it’s expanded beyond these classic codes. These days, you can get a tailored Bode suit; a slinky, sheer dress or little bikini; or a structured corduroy pant. And if you have kids, you can buy them a mini patchwork shirt from Baby Bode, with a stuffed dog to match.
One avenue to introduce shoppers to Bode’s wider world is through retail. It’s via Bode’s stores that the designer has guided consumers through the label’s evolution to date — and learnt by what clicks. “It’s so interesting to see what didn’t move at the beginning when we opened our women’s store at Worth Street [in New York], and then what all of a sudden flies out the door this season,” Adams Bode Auijla says. The little lacy Tap shorts, for one. It took a second, because you don’t see them and immediately think ‘Bode’, she explains.
“It’s our job, for the next few years, to really tell the story of that product offering,” Adams Bode Aujla says. You might not think Bode is somewhere you can go to get a “really fun little lingerie thing for my bridal party”, she says. “You would think, ‘Oh, I’ll get a shirt for my husband.’” The focus now is on making sure the way in which the brand is perceived is in line with what it does.
Over the last eight years, consumers have gotten to know Bode largely through its wholesale accounts, the founder says — not with a view of entire collections. “Bergdorf’s assortment and Nordstrom’s assortment is so specific to their clientele,” she explains. “It’s specific racks of maybe only shirting one season, or whatever it is that the buyer is so inclined to for that collection. Maybe it’s all Americana things. So for us, it’s like, ‘How do we show the entire brand story going into this next decade?’”
This is where more owned retail comes in. Bode is gearing up to establish a global retail footprint. “I think over the next 10 years, that’s going to be our real focus,” Adams Bode Auijla says. When I ask where, she laughs: “Europe and Asia.”
In the US, though, there’s more room for play. For now, Bode is bicoastal, with stores in New York and Los Angeles. As for where’s next, the team is faced with a choice: go where they know they have a successful wholesale presence, or where they have a hunch the brand would hit. “Do you go to the next big city, or do you go somewhere that feels like a smaller, more intimate moment for Bode?” Adams Bode Auijla asks.
New Orleans, perhaps?
Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.
More from this author:
‘I’m not holding my breath anymore’: Behind the scenes of Christopher John Rogers’s NYFW return
From après fits to specialised wellness, here’s how brands should hit the slopes in 2025
