Emily Adams Bode Aujla talks Bode’s first store in Paris

While expecting her second child, for Emily Adams Bode Aujla, baby makes four. When it comes to her business’s babies—the retail stores—she now has six to tend to.

On Friday night of Paris Fashion Week, the designer, along with husband and business partner Aaron Aujla from Green River Projects, opened their first international outpost of Bode in Paris. The store sits on a prime corner at the edge of Rue de Valois and Place de Valois behind the Ministry of Culture, as well as the gardens and shops of Palais Royal. However, Bode Aujla wasn’t in Pairs as she is 36 weeks pregnant with her second child, and travel was inadvisable. Thus, she was safely back in New York while Aujla greeted the press, retailers, and friends at the new space.

FashionNetwork.com spoke with the designer and expectant mother over Zoom just as the cocktail event in Paris wound down.

“It was really important that Paris housed the entire collection as the first introduction to European retail. We sell quite a lot in Paris and globally,” Bode Aujla said over Zoom.

The real estate hunting was done through an American-Parisian, Melissa Regan Devogele, who specializes in renting iconic Paris addresses for fashion events and long-term rentals. The couple made many trips to visit the various options and neighborhoods.

“Melissa and I have a funny random connection. My parents, dear friends, her parents were friends with them too. It’s just such a bizarre small-world coincidence. We took our time to find the right spot; this one had the right square footage, a great location near the shops in the Palais Royal, and ample window space, including one that looks out on the Place Valois,” Bode Aujla said, adding, “once we decided on a spot the process moved quickly.”

Green River Project— Aujla’s furniture and interior design firm, which has constructed brand settings from runways to retail stores —has led the transformation of the space. This involved gutting the modern white décor former restaurant to transform it into a sexy, moody 1930s salon with touches of décor inspired by fly-fishing—an ode to French hotelier Charles Ritz, who mastered the fishing technique while in the States— and other design movements for an eclectic yet personal overall effect.

For example, an antique dollhouse sits in an angled window that faces the Place.
Dark brown walls with marble and wood finishes were created with trompe l’oeil painting techniques, and a dark wood floor helped the sultry mood with accents such as custom brass light fixtures with pleated shades trimmed in antique fringe and an arched paneled vintage wall mirror.

Eclectic, charming décor quirks include sofas made from French silks and OOAK shirting, including a French antique piece sourced in the U.S. shipped to reside in the store, a deaccessioned table from the National Bank of France held neatly folded clothing, and actual Bode family photos bedecked a side table. Fisherman baskets and bamboo fishing rods by French manufacturer Pezon et Michel are on display and pay homage to Ritz, who once served as its technical director.

While Aujla traveled back and forth, a cousin oversaw the construction. According to Bode Aujla, the design process also mainly happened over Zoom. The couple is extremely aligned this way and is used to teleworking. “I just Facetimed her just before the cocktail; we work like this a lot, even with our apartments, we have a shorthand now. She also sent things she found from the States,” Aujla told FashonNetwork.com at the opening.

“We tried not to pick up an American sensibility and just drop it in Paris, which wouldn’t feel congruent. Make it feel like the 1930s in this neighborhood of Paris, but then an American sportswear company landed here like the old version of Abercrombie & Fitch, which was elevated and elegant,” he explained of the design.

Aujla was on hand to greet the press, retailers, and friends such as including Eva Chen, Sarah Andelman, Julie Gilhart, Rickie de Sole, and L’Officine Universelle Buly’s Ramdane Touhami, who was crucial to helping navigate tricky French bureaucracy. While the couple had staged shows and presentations in Paris, a flagship store was another business matter.

“Nothing could have prepared me for the necessary permits, regulations, and code adherence. You can’t know this until you start,” she continued, adding, “Being a nascent nine-year-old American brand doing business abroad is one thing, but having a footprint abroad is entirely different in terms of operations. We had to start a French company and hire a French legal team, and we also relied heavily on friends of ours in Paris, like Ramdane.”

According to Bode, the most significant theme throughout the brand is the preservation of craft, which encompasses the reuse of textiles: “I made a lot of men’s shirting from French linens that I’ve been doing since the first collection, or even in college, but also a lot of women’s dresses from French lace and some trimming, some very little lingerie with Eiffel Tower patches. The goal is to continue to offer just in all of our retail stores.”

The store will feature exclusive products such as the aforementioned cheeky undies and OOAK styles cut from century-old French linens, piano shawls made into slinky camisoles, a caftan made from women’s lingerie, neckties with hand-tied fly details, and traditional French berets.

It was nice to see an American design presence in town during Paris Fashion Week (though some argue it would be better to see these brands stateside during New York Fashion Week). The brand couldn’t pass up an opportunity to participate in a GQ fashion initiative during the Superbowl and showed its Bode Recreation line (to include a Nike collaboration as it related to the football theme.)

“We might focus on telling a different narrative to get the perception we want across from any given season. When we launched women’s, it was necessary to do a show to show the full picture of the wardrobe for the Bode girl. Same with the Super Bowl; it was such a specific opportunity that allowed us to tackle the narrative of Bode recreation in a destination show in New Orleans on the New York Fashion Week calendar,” she explained.

They participated by being on the official CFDA calendar, as the organization means a lot to Bode Aujla. “I couldn’t have had the brand I have today without the support from the CFDA. From the very beginning, they were great. They helped fund those early presentations during NYFW, which was inconceivable then.”