Bode, the all-American label, has landed in Japan. Founder Emily Adams Bode Aujla, whose brand is known for its wholesome, grandpa chic aesthetic and repurposing of vintage textiles, is expanding her business with an embassy-inspired store in Tokyo — the brand’s first independent retail space in Asia.
“It’s quite a perfect time,” says Bode Aujla, speaking from her home in New York just a couple of days before catching her flight to the store opening. Her intonation implies humility, but she’s right: the timing for a brand of Bode’s stature to open a store in Tokyo is ideal for many reasons. The Japanese yen, which is trading at multi-decade lows, is dissuading local consumers from traveling abroad, while bringing in record numbers of foreign shoppers and giving foreign businesses more spending power for real estate.
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US tariffs have also accelerated the brand’s focus on expanding its retail footprint. “I think our international clients might be more concerned or conservative with shopping right now,” she says. “I can’t speak on their behalf, but I can imagine that it’ll be really exciting to be able to see the clothes in-person and not have to ship them halfway across the world.” Bode’s collections span both womenswear and men’s, and are priced from $280 for an embroidered T-shirt to over $2,000 for suiting. The brand also offers one-of-a-kind pieces made from antique fabrics, along with corduroy or suede jackets featuring hand-drawn details — most recently sported by Jacob Elordi — that are currently waitlist-only.
Bode has a sizable following in Asia, the designer says, with hopes that the Tokyo opening will allow consumers in neighboring regions to shop the brand. But why Tokyo over, say, Shanghai or Seoul? “When I first launched the brand [in 2016] I had a write-up in The New York Times, and immediately had a lot of interest from Japanese wholesale accounts,” Bode Aujla says. “They really connected with the product and understood it off the bat, whereas it took a minute to gain my footing in American wholesale.” The brand quickly picked up a handful of Japanese stockists in its first two years, and maintains eight wholesale accounts in the country.
Early on, Bode’s approach of one-off pieces made from vintage textiles may have felt like an alien proposition to Western buyers, but Japanese consumers have historically had a strong appetite for the handcrafted and slower fashion narrative the business is built around. “The Japanese stores and boutiques had no issue [with our approach]. They would come in and buy all the product off the rack, and by the end of market, everything would be gone from my apartment,” she says. “It was such a different way of building and scaling a brand that they embraced.”
Establishing an independent footprint
The Tokyo store is located on the ground floor of an apartment building in Yoyogi-Uehara, a neighborhood popular with the fashion crowd, which sits west of the busier, touristy areas of Shibuya and Harajuku. The choice of location is intuitive — a brand-building exercise in line with Bode’s homely identity rather than a targeted push into a particular area. “There are different metrics that everybody uses to think about the reasoning behind opening a store. But for us, it really is about the space itself and the idea of a more residential neighborhood, like where people pick up their kids or go to get coffee,” says Bode Aujla.
Her interior designer husband Aaron Aujla put in “tens of thousands of steps” around the city to find the perfect place, and it was decorated under his company Green River Project LLC. Intended to evoke a government embassy, the entrance includes two flagpoles bearing American and Japanese flags, while the furniture and art is inspired by Jackie Kennedy’s restoration of the White House in the early ’60s. A painting of a buffalo that hung in JFK’s Oval Office, reproduced by artist Matt Kenny, hangs at the entryway.
As well as the higher margin sales that come with owned retail, a standalone store will allow Bode’s Japanese fanbase to shop the full range of products. “As much as I love our wholesale accounts, I want to be able to show the entire collection,” Bode Aujla says. Store-exclusive capsules have spurred sales in Tokyo before, but now local customers can experience a fully formed expression of the brand. “With your own space, it’s just tenfold.”
Including Tokyo, Bode now operates five standalone stores globally: two in New York, one in LA, and one in Paris. The latter, which opened in March last year, has been performing very well, according to the designer. “Paris really gave us the confidence to go to Asia,” she says. Bode does not work with a local retail partner in Paris and Tokyo, which is a rarity for an independent brand venturing into foreign territory.
Both Paris and Tokyo are part of a long-term retail expansion that will allow the brand to take fuller ownership of its pricing and product assortment across Europe and Asia, while breaking away from the wholesale constraints that come with a turbulent e-commerce market and uncertain buying budgets. The trajectory is steady: “At the moment we’re opening around one store a year,” says Bode Aujla, adding that beyond Japan, sales are particularly strong in South Korea. “We’ve jumped around thinking about where we want to do the next one after Tokyo. Seoul is in the running for sure.”
Tailoring to Tokyo
A major reason for Bode’s success in the States is the way it has nurtured a sense of belonging in the local menswear community. But can this be replicated in Asia? “I think a lot of that has to do with the hires that we make, because they help represent the brand and share the story with the clients. We’ll also be posting in the Japanese language,” she says. The designer also plans to be on the ground herself. “The goal is to spend more time over there.” The company currently employs 10 staff in Tokyo, spanning retail and administrative roles.
To address both domestic and inbound consumers, Bode Aujla is planning to make Japan-specific products for the Tokyo store, as well as souvenir pieces “that tourists can buy as a remembrance of their trip to Japan in general”. Exclusives include pillows sewn from mid-century National Parks pillowcases, and T-shirts decorated with American gumball charms. Because Bode’s wholesale buyers often invest more in the brand’s menswear — which female customers then buy — having more womenswear in the store is a focus. “To be able to have our women’s collections present in their entirety will be really helpful to allow our Japanese clients, girls and women, to try it on and experience it,” she says.
Also on the cards is a push into event dressing, which is an increasingly significant part of the brand’s business. “One thing we’ve seen is that in all of our US stores, people are coming to us for weddings,” she says. “So I’d love to think about milestones and event dressing in both Paris and in Tokyo, and see how people will react to that.”
As the brand enters its second decade, Bode Aujla isn’t planning to alter the blueprint she’s already established. “The biggest thing that I’ve learned is that you have to stick to your original ethos,” she says. “It’s about having a strong foundation that you can come back to over and over, no matter where you are in the world.”
