Who Owns Quilted Clothing?
The designer Emily Adams Bode immediately made a mark in the fashion world when she debuted her first collection of quilted clothing in July 2016. Her jackets, pants, and shirts—made from antique fabrics like quilts, towels, and grain sacks—epitomized a new era in menswear, marked by an appreciation for handcrafted textiles and a buy-less and buy-better ethos. She was a 2018 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalist, and her pieces are worn by celebrities like Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, and Jeremy O. Harris. She is also considered a spearhead of fashion’s move toward “upcycled” clothing. That level of popularity always begets a wave of imitators, and you can now find quilted coats at fast-fashion retailers like & Other Stories and ASOS, but also at designer e-commerce repositories like Matches. Vintage buyers have even hopped onto the trend—there are nearly 55,000 results for “quilt jacket” on Etsy—and other brands, like California’s 3 Women and Pentimento, have joined Bode in a sort of upcycled artisan textile movement, albeit at a smaller scale. Read more at GQ.