This Super Bowl weekend, a subset of the city’s fashion crowd are trading New York for New Orleans. Not for the Chiefs vs Eagles NFL game, but for the inaugural GQ Bowl, host to Bode Rec.’s first runway show.
Bode Rec. is the activewear-focused line of New York brand Bode. You probably recognise the sub-brand from its splashy (and sold-out) Nike collaboration in April last year, which included knits, sneakers, athletic shorts and sweats. Now, founder and designer Emily Adams Bode Aujla is cementing Bode Rec.’s place alongside her main line. Bode Rec. pieces are priced below the main line (many items fall in the low to mid-hundreds), with some more elaborate pieces priced closer to Bode itself. The pieces are designed to be moved in, meaning sturdier fabrics that can be worn and washed time and time again.
When we speak, Adams Bode Aujla is gearing up for fittings at her WSA studio, before heading to Louisiana days before Friday night’s show. GQ editor-in-chief Will Welch approached Adams Bode Aujla directly about showing at GQ’s inaugural Bowl, which will be a “toast to the global symbiosis of sports and fashion”, host to a runway show and party, held at Hotel Peter and Paul in New Orleans. “He has such a vision for what makes a good moment around an existing moment,” she says. “He was very aware of how [Bode Rec.] has been one of the methods by which we’re expanding as a brand.”
That Rec.’s Nike collab was centred around football (a personal touch; Adams Bode Aujla’s father played in high school and college) made this the perfect moment for a runway debut. The designer is selective about when she puts on a runway show, this being Bode’s first since it launched womenswear in January 2023. “I feel like it’s best when there’s an intentionality behind it,” she says.
“When I launched women’s, I felt like there was such an important part of this idea of having a show to show the whole world view of what we were trying to create,” she says. Bode was launching to a new customer — women who weren’t necessarily the same women already buying (and wearing) Bode men’s. A year into Bode Rec., tonight’s runway is held with the same goal. “To be able to show on a runway with an event and music and energy, I think it’ll help shape a little bit more for people what this is that we’re working on,” Adams Bode Aujla says.
(Re)Introducing Bode Rec.
Bode Rec. is what Adams Bode Aujla refers to as Bode main line’s “underlying brand”. Going forward, it’ll sit alongside the core collection, but won’t necessarily always follow the same calendar, the designer says. “Bode Rec. is a line in and of itself,” she says.
It’s the right moment to go all in on sports, after what was perhaps fashion and sports’s biggest crossover year yet. But Rec. is a move informed by extensive research on Adams Bode Aujla’s part, dating back long before 2024 — through the past 200 years of American athleticwear. She notes the ways in which uniforms changed as TV shifted from black and white to colour. “That then changes the way in which the viewer is seeing these uniforms and also the make of the clothes,” she says. In 2025, she’s designing for clothing seen on the field, the street and on our screens. (The GQ Bowl will be live streamed on GQ.com and on YouTube.)
