The Hobby of Collecting: Bode's Miniatures

E mily Adams Bode is an Atlanta-born, New York-based designer who launched her namesake brand (@BODE) in 2016 after stints at Ralph Lauren and Marc Jacobs. This year, she celebrated her 30th birthday, won Emerging Designer of the Year at the CFDA Fashion Awards, was named a finalist for the LVMH Prize for young fashion designers and debuted her first runway show at Paris Fashion Week Men’s.

Her sentimental modern workwear is created by applying historical methods of quilting, mending and appliqué shapes to delicate globally-sourced vintage fabrics, towels and even tablecloths. This love for found items started early, with her family-nurtured collection of miniatures – a category that Sotheby's is no stranger to – having sold tiny treasures, ranging from miniature portraits to rare dollhouses. And so, for our second edition of The Hobby of Collecting, we focused on all things small.

When I found out you collected miniatures, I wasn't totally sure what that meant. Where did you first encounter them?

I grew up antiquing with my mom and aunt and some of their friends. Going to antique markets was a monthly activity.

So you got the collection started on these antique shopping trips?

Yes, and also my mom and one of my aunts, in particular, were very into gifting them to me. One of the aunts has a tradition that every time her husband goes out of town, she'll sneak a little something for good luck in his bag, so sometimes just a miniature in that it's a dollhouse kind of thing, or sometimes it's a piece of an antique game. They saw miniatures as good luck charms. What I loved about the antique miniatures is that a lot of them were homemade. I had some that were manufactured – there's a little rubber cow, and that's pre-war, probably early 40s. A lot of the metal ones are the same time period, even a little earlier.

I love that. Seems like something that really stuck with you.

I don't know if it was necessarily outfitting my dollhouses, but the way I see it, it was the first introduction, before I even decorated my room, to creating a space for myself or having a particular sense of who I was as a person. What I enjoyed surrounding myself with in terms of objects or colors or just aesthetically.

Are you still actively buying them?

I collect more fabric now, and furniture, objects. But, of course, my mom will put them in my stocking. Some stuff is totally ephemera, but a lot of it is made to be treasured by a child, which I think is a fascinating idea because it's a different way of looking at objects.

Your Fall 2019 show was inspired by gallerist Todd Alden. One of the standout pieces was a PVC raincoat set with pennies and milk bottle caps.

That collection was inspired by his personal narrative about his childhood and getting into collecting, and we have a lot of shared interests in what we began collecting, like ephemeral objects, sugar packets and napkins, miniatures and yes, pennies. I also made tote bags that are doll clothes sealed between two pieces of PVC; I think we bought over 500 individual garments. A lot of those are homemade, and a lot of them are pre-1950s, which is really cool because you see these fabrics that were clearly a men's shirt or something, made into Barbie size.

It seems like collecting, which began with these tiny, often handmade miniatures, is integral to your process as a designer and creative person.

It's incredible how much detail goes into these little objects. That's a way that I view making the Bode collection. And also, just as a whole, creating an entire universe. The way that I do my presentations and the way that I have built my apartment or my bedroom in college, or my bedroom as a child, it's very much around creating this entire aesthetic universe. When you open the door, you have an immediate response.