How did BODE, New York's most 'niche' men's brand, become the best thing that has ever happened to American fashion? How did the couple behind BODE change the definition of 'power couple' again?
Theirs is a true New York-style love story, the 'dream scenario' of couples who make careers in the creative industries… Our daughter Emily Adams Bode was born in Aujla, Atlanta, studied in Switzerland, and went to New York for a double major in menswear and philosophy at Parsons. A young talent who has recently moved and won almost all of the "Best Male Fashion Designer" awards... Our son Aaron Aujla, on the other hand, is a bohemian 'carpenter' who moved to New York for university from an Indian family that immigrated to Canada in the 1950s. '…
The couple met in the circle of friends during their university years. With The Green River Project, which he founded with his partner, Aaron changes the furniture and interior design that is "modern, urban, rustic, with a limited story, lots of depth". At the same time, Emily establishes Bode, a men's 'couture' clothing brand that combines vintage culture with a 'recycle & reuse' sensibility. The works of both find their full consistency thanks to the traces and ideas they carry from each other.
Styles from tablecloth, curtain, and kitchen cloth
Bode soon turns into a "fashion sensation" in the industry. The couple registered their close relationship for 10 years with a 'marriage proposal' prepared with the taste of a 30th birthday surprise. Every detail that reflects Indian traditions in a very 'bohemian' and 'sterilized' way is photographed by Vogue and turned into an inspiration board by Pinterest. “There is no line between what we do and our hobbies. The relationship between us has always been a part of what we love to do,” he says in an interview with the Financial Times.
Emily likes to design men's products that women will also like to wear. He often uses “heirloom fabrics” in his designs; Curtains, tablecloths, kitchen cloths, and linen pieces from the old periods constitute the design concept that makes Bode Bode. BODE, which started in a tiny couture studio with limited-edition pieces by appointment and order, opens a very modest store in Chinatown a few years later. Aaron hand draws, cuts, cuts, and hangs the interior of the store, which resembles an old-school American hotel lobby. The patterns and cuts of the bode pieces reek of details from Aaron's Indian roots. It makes the terms 'Grandpa Chic' and 'Farm-to-table Chic' come up again in the fashion lexicon.
Harry Styles and Mick Jagger also wore them
BODE is famous among the city's 'micro-celebrity' names for suddenly transforming into a 'uniform' outfit. Two years ago, he was named Designer of the Year by the CFDA and added to Forbes magazine's 30 Under 30 Talent list. Listed by Business of Fashion as America's fastest growing and highest 'promising' boutique menswear brand. Giant brands, from Gucci to Nike, line up for collaborations and projects. Popular and stylish names like Harry Styles, Bruno Mars, and the Jonas Brothers often manage to wear BODE instead of billion-dollar fashion brands. Some parts are already on the black market. Mick Jagger shares his Christmas and New Year's Eve with a BODE shirt, in front of the Christmas tree in his house, with a lot of patterned / grandma rugs. It is not easy in many ways to buy the products of BODE, which sells 30 thousand shirts. High prices, limited production, and cloth pieces and pattern extensions that you are not accustomed to seeing in men's clothing carry BODE to a completely different class by itself.
Brother to the world of Wes Anderson
The week the store opened, when I walked in from Bode, I was wearing a cashmere thin sweater with a coincidence, heirloom milk brown, thin collar, and wide buttons. Aaron's hawk eyes seemed to have filtered through the sweater from head to toe with an invisible X-Ray ray and began to list his guesswork anecdotes about the fabric and its technical details. I left the feeling of just losing my grandfather and not being able to attend his funeral in the middle of the store. On my second visit, I was wearing blue tracksuit-like trousers with loose patches, which I bought for two cents from a street market in Oxaca on a trip to Mexico. The patterns on it and the different pieces of fabric used together turned into a spontaneous 'chat' in the store.
In 2019 the world of BODE got a little wider; First, a large and spacious store in Los Angeles, and then a neighborhood coffee shop/tailor opened adjacent to the first store in Chinatown. In the mountains of India, the couple has completed the process of designing their own 'Wes Anderson' world, thanks to the 'adjacent' space built for them, as if from an old village school, using chalkboard, excess fiberboard, dissimilar cups and jars. Bode established his own style that reveals who he is in detail, like the inner world of director Wes Anderson, which can be summarized with a font or color palette. If the acclaimed director were in a parallel universe, the son of a traditional Indian family full of sophistication and hipster ideas, the teenage room and wardrobe would definitely be BODE.
The last example of nano fame is the couple
The detail that really made BODE fly was his perfect timing. The birth years of the brand coincided with the 'nano' and 'micro' periods of its fame history. Let's open it: The concept of fame as we know it has changed into a kind of 'shell' after the invention of social media. At a time when everyone felt famous and started to live like that, 'nano fame' names that were known only by a niche audience and whose power of effectiveness was low but succinct and extremely powerful became as valuable as the actors and musicians, who dragged millions after them. In New York, the center of attraction for many industries such as art, fashion, and media, Emily and Aaron are the first couples that come to mind when talking about "nano fame". The couple is breaking the existing templates not only with what they have produced in their careers but also with the form and dynamics of their relationships. They are re-questioning the well-known definition and understanding of the 'power couple'.
What does 'power center' couple mean, and how to be
“Power couple” can also be summarized as the union of two very successful and effective names in their fields. The common synergy they create enables them to achieve great success. 'Power couples' can be encountered at every point in your life, at every corner of human history (Historians cite the most effective 'power couple' of all time as Egyptian 'goddess' Cleopatra and Roman commander Marcus Antonius). Couples who know how to create strength from unity in the office, in the neighborhood, in the social environment, and who can use their partner's power and talent in a different subject to their advantage, automatically evolve into the 'power couple' status; Relationships also seem to change dimensions.
In a way, this is a 'double' energy that develops and grows quite innocently, spontaneously, and organically. In the language of some couples, 'our new baby' is not actually a newborn baby, but a nickname for a creative project they completed together. After all, the “fruit of love” can grow, grow, and be eaten in dozens of different forms. He who knows how to carry and use it correctly can add life to his life, peace to his peace, and money to his money. In the political arena or in the Hollywood hills, "power" couples once made headlines with this title. Now they have been replaced by sci-tech couples and social media influencers. However, the marriage of influencers who meet and get married on TikTok does not last for a few years, 'black cat' content comes in the way.
The beauty of complementing each other
Our paths crossed with Emily and Aaron a few more times during my time as a fashion magazine manager; we fell on different ends of the same table, I had the chance to 'filter' this couple from far and near, which has become a center of 'power and attraction' in the creative circle of New York. Emily's soft tone was reminiscent of a goose-down pillow where you would fall asleep as soon as you lay your head. Aaron's aura of 'East-West' synthesis was like a magic formula that societies stuck between different cultures could not find. Sometimes the couple, who seem to be extremely ordinary and sometimes want to 'disappear', sometimes say, "Is it as if they don't care about anything, could it be calculated down to the last detail?" he was thinking. At every opportunity, he says, “I do my best to provide the environment that he wants to produce whatever he wants”, one for the other. “It is my greatest happiness for him to realize a dream project” is another phrase that the couple loves very much. Some couples talk by interrupting each other. Others complete each other's sentences and it doesn't matter who says what or why. The Bode couple, whose name you will hear more often in the future, is of the second type. One of those who re-interpret and beautify production as a couple.