Emily Bode Brings The Circus To Paris

The models at Bode’s spring/summer 2020 fashion show Tuesday in Paris dripped down the runway in painfully slow motion. They crept and shuffled in their ballet flats with all the sputtering energy of a child who’s sent to bed early but doesn’t want the fun to end. “I wanted it to feel like you were strolling with your best friend through the streets or through a park and it’s summertime,” she said over the phone from Paris shortly after the show ended. But the slow march had a practical application, too: “For our models to walk fast, it wouldn’t make sense for the brand. We have such a focus on the stitching, and the applique, and all the quilting and hand paintings on the jackets.” To take it all in, Bode needed to slow down. The entire universe Bode’s created since launching her eponymous brand in 2016 could be organized around that single, simple rule: slow is better. No one puts a cooler face on the idea of slow fashion than Bode, who takes vintage fabrics and finds new homes for them on patchwork trousers or reproduces them for intricately embroidered shirts. While the models’ glacial movements were unusual, the clothes they appeared in were spectacular in typical Bode fashion. Look closely at a pair of vividly striped pants and you’ll find they’re made completely out of ribbons from the 1970s that were awarded to horses—they are good, neigh, great pants. A long duster jacket was made out of a satin the Bode team based on a bedroom curtain from the ‘20s. Read more at GQ.