An Exclusive Look at Bode’s Rodeo-Ready Levi’s Collaboration
If you know Emily Adams Bode Aujla, it won’t surprise you to learn that she’s kept just about every pair of jeans she wore in her childhood—some 40 pairs in all. “I save everything,” says the Bode founder and designer, whose universe of heirloom-quality luxury Americana is built on boxes and boxes of personal heirlooms that she has collected and cherished over the decades.
A few years ago, Bode Aujla cracked open her denim stash for a big new project: her debut collaboration with Levi’s, detailed here for the first time.
The Levi’s jean is essentially the universal donor of fashion. In the past few seasons alone its DNA has been spliced with brands as disparate as Air Jordan and Barbour, and reengineered by a diverse mix of designers that includes Sacai’s Chitose Abe, Eli Russell Linnetz, and Kiko Kostadinov. Dior’s Jonathan Anderson wears vintage 501s daily, and Chanel’s Matthieu Blazy is also known to be a fan. Which is all to say that putting your personal stamp on Levi’s is a tall order, almost akin to saying that you’re going to reinvent the white dress shirt or blue blazer.
Bode Aujla navigated the task by researching a web of singular references, lassoing together the history of the American rodeo, the bountiful Levi’s archive in San Francisco, and even the pony she rode as a kid in Atlanta, whose name was Checkers. (In a charming coincidence, Kostadinov’s latest Levi’s collab debuted in a show inspired by his pet Lakeland Terrier, Dante.)
The Bode x Levi’s collection includes two pairs of straight-leg “Barrel Racer Jeans” with cowboy-influenced studding down the legs and custom detailing throughout, including a shadow patch with Bode chainstitching and a purple (rather than red) tab. Bode Aujla’s trusty steed, a retired barrel racer who was blind in one eye, is immortalized on a woven label—based on one found deep in the Levi’s collection—on the back pocket.
“I really enjoy going into the bins in my parents’ basement where all my horse ribbons and my saddles are,” Bode Aujla says. “It’s one small narrative that was a few years of my life—it’s not like I’m still showing horses. But it did heavily inform who I am as a person, and taught me what it means to love animals, care for something, and train for a practice.”
