We should note, in terms of time and space, that the dogs aren’t just dogs. They’re wirehaired pointing griffons, cheerful and gigantic hunting dogs that, in lieu of hunting, are burly, slobbering socializers, adding to the logistical demands of parenthood—one of the reasons why, when we spoke, and when her home team included two children under two, she was momentarily drinking coffee, a slight embarrassment.
“I’m from the South, so I’m an iced tea drinker,” she lamented. “I don’t want to rely on coffee!” Coffee, for Emily, was way back in college, in the early 2010s, when late-night caffeine pushed her through her first men’s clothing ideas that, a few years later, became her Lower East Side–apartment–based Bode. That story is now ancient history: In 2016 she set about simultaneously exploring the family traditions that inspired her—her roots are in New England as well as the area of the Piedmont region better known as Atlanta—and the historic American craft traditions that fascinated her, eventually working in collaboration with her now husband and business partner, Aaron Aujla. As husband and wife have brought on two kids and accompanying griffons (the first one a gift from Emily’s mom, the second one their idea, believe it or not)—as she fought the naysayers who advised against making shirts with vintage quilts or pants cut from gorgeous deadstock fabrics or decorated with, say, buttons discovered in a closed-up Midwestern warehouse—the family business has grown alongside the family: Bode has become a global brand with an ever-growing list of stores in the US and overseas.
On a visit to their house not long after they moved in, I asked Emily to reflect on how things had changed from only a few years back, when the world was wondering if she’d ever launch a women’s collection—until she showed reimagined bolero jackets and gowns and sheer dresses that segued between past and present. At the time, she and Aaron had just opened up an LA store (there are now also two in New York and one in Paris) and gotten married in the Connecticut country house that Aujla had only just renovated with Benjamin Bloomstein, Aujla’s partner in Green River Project, the interior design firm and furniture maker. And when she looks back, she is almost surprised. “What’s wildly changed is that now we’re venturing into different parts of the world in a way that we had never done before, at the same time that we’re getting our feet even more grounded here,” she says. “It’s kind of like this bizarre juxtaposition, right? We’re growing our nuclear family here, but our fingers are going into different parts of the world.”