BODE TEAMS UP WITH MICROSOFT ON NEW PROJECT

On Tuesday night, NYC-based fashion designer Emily Adams Bode celebrated the launch of the Bode Vault, a powerful design-to-production platform developed by Microsoft in collaboration with Bode powered by AI technology.

Since founding her eponymous luxury menswear line in 2016, Emily Adams Bode rapidly became a true industry darling. Bode was the first female designer to show at New York Fashion Week: Men’s, the winner of the 2019 CFDA Award for Emerging Designer of the Year, and most recently granted the Inaugural Karl Lagerfeld Award for Innovation by Woolmark. And, with increasing demand, Bode is faced with the challenge of finding ways of organizing and categorizing an extensive inventory of bespoke raw materials — she looked to Microsoft to develop a solution for streamlining growth and efficiency.

The Bode Vault is built with Microsoft Custom Vision AI and an integrated database system called Cosmos DB an extension of Microsoft Azure, the quilt archive is trained on hundreds of images to make up a nuanced library that contains a roster of historic quilts of various patterns. From keeping track of inventory to offering up niche institutional knowledge, the archive is also an educational tool that serves as a host of essential functions for the business.

“I am excited to partner with Microsoft to help tell and share the stories of American quilts,” said Bode. “This partnership uses technology to help us identify quilts in the field and in our stores. I aim to reinvigorate the rich history behind these textiles for my design team as we continue to grow with the potential of it becoming public-facing.”

“The partnership with Bode demonstrates how Microsoft technology is unlocking creative and enterprise innovation for fashion designers and the industry,” added Maruschka Loubser, director of brand partnerships at Microsoft. “Particularly for smaller companies, this allows them to rethink their process and structure with technology as a collaborative tool.”

Photos by William Jess Laird