Ms Emily Adams Bode is freakishly busy. The New York-based fashion designer’s eponymous menswear brand was a finalist in the LVMH prize this year and a CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalist in 2018, and thanks to soaring popularity among both her customers and the fashion press (Vogue said her Spring 2020 collection was “certainly original if not flawless”), plus a healthy celebrity following (both Messrs Ezra Miller and Leon Bridges have worn her creations on the red carpet). Bode – pronounced “boh-dee” – is barely three years old, but the buzz around it is palpable and as such, Ms Bode has a lot to do.

“I’m pretty much working on three to four seasons at once,” Ms Bode explains to us over the phone from New York, bundling herself into a car to get to a meeting as she goes. “Because you’re doing the season that you’re shipping, you’re doing the season that you’ve showed and the seasons you’re developing that you’re about to show, and then you have all of your special projects and compositions,” she says. “I also feel like New York makes it more stressful,” she says, tentatively suggesting that Europe doesn’t quite match the “New York minute” mentality. “People are like, ‘if this s**t doesn’t get here for this shoot, it’s over!’”

It seems Ms Bode thrives under pressure. After moving to New York from Atlanta, Georgia, she studied a double major of both philosophy and menswear design – “it was a lot, but it was worth it” – before interning at Ralph Lauren and Marc Jacobs. And while Bode is only just making its mark on the industry, it’s clear the designer enjoys the frantic pace of the fashion world. “[One day] this week we stayed up overnight with my team finishing a custom look for an athlete. It’s just stuff that’s maybe… people learn to say no to?” she laughs. “But we’re so excited by some of our clients that it makes sense.”

Still, while Bode exists in the aggressively pacy fashion industry, those who seek out the brand do so because it represents something a little more staid. The patchwork jackets, for instance, are all unique and made from antique fabrics – she walks me through a particular item that she knows dates to 1931. This attention to historical detail in her design, she says, “comes from my love of preserving history, and from introducing people to history and a personal narrative.” The most recent collection was inspired by an old family business, the Bode Wagon Company, and a commission of wagons they made for the circus companies over the years. The result is a vaudeville-style set of clothes that, with their clownish colours, folksy embroidery and finely cut shapes, somehow hit this magical point between costume design and high fashion that feels approachable; these are comfortable, easy, beautiful clothes to wear.

Repurposing vintage textiles (“anything from table cloths to aprons”) and turning them into gorgeous Frankenstein-style creations is Bode’s bread and butter, and is something the designer became interested in after spending times at vintage markets and fairs from her childhood. “There was a specific trip that I’d take with my mom and my friends to Massachusetts, where my parents were born and raised,” she explains. “We went to all of the antique stores in and around Cape Cod and Boston, and it just became a large part of my life.”

Bode is sustainable too, though this is less a contrived stab at millennial relevance and more a core part of both the brand’s aesthetic and its business model; currently 38 to 40 per cent of the fabrics the brand uses are antique, which is practically unheard of for a contemporary fashion brand. “The industry is changing so much and the way you can build your company is not traditional anymore. The way we created a business model is unlike a lot of brands that exist already in the industry,” she explains. “I don’t think it’s quite like anything else now. We’ve got people to look at materials in a new way.”

See below for Ms Emily Bode’s insight on through three items from the latest collection, which has just landed on MR PORTER.

“When we began the brand three years ago, we launched the collection as one-of-a-kind shirt, trousers and workwear jackets, and the jackets were primarily made from antique textiles like this one. It’s made from an American quilt from the late 1890s through the 1910s. With all the wools and the embroidery, this is what was called a crazy quilt. It has really beautiful instances of hand embroidery.”

“The shirt is [made of fabric from] the Edwardian period. We use Edwardian embroidery from around the 1910s that uses a particular colour called a Turkey Red. With all the good luck charms and the cow, this fabric would have originally been something that someone made as a summer quilt topper, so it would have gone on your bed. We put together our favourite samples, and then we embroider it in India.”

“These are the Senior corduroy trousers, these are all entirely hand drawn in our studio here in New York. We did these exclusively for you guys at MR PORTER by putting London on the back! This tradition dates back to the early 1900s; in Purdue University seniors would commemorate their graduation or their schooling years by drawing on their corduroys with their friends.”