MARKET RESEARCH:
BODE’S “BEIGE FLORAL
PATCH SHIRT”

My shirt arrived with a tag that said it is modeled after an Indian tablecloth from the 1940s. When I showed it to a coworker, he compared it to his grandma’s couch cushions. Bode is making its name on these kinds of design principles; clothes made from antique fabrics, one-of-one; stuff you might have had to obsessively thrift for, or rummage out of an older relative’s storage, back in the days before Uber.

Still, hunt we must, and L.A. offers a great assortment of site-specific shops I try to make time to visit. My favorite to recommend is the Big 5 on Normandie in Koreatown. It’s basically a West Coast version of a Modell’s-type sporting goods store; after multiple visits, I’ve found Big 5 reliable for some flamey Nike logo tees, copious flannels, and other odds-and-ends you don’t remember you need until you see them. The service is also immaculate; a security guard greets you at the door instead of following you around back aisles, and their employees have an Apple Store-level of concern for folks wandering the fluorescent-lit floor. One such clerk, an older woman with a warm smile, gave my Bode shirt a compliment after helping a gentleman specify a certain model of fishing rod. Sporting this breezy bowler-style shirt and a brown baseball cap, I thought, I could go fishing right now. I realized you never really hear about fishing in L.A.

I headed toward La Brea, next, namely for a flagship store called Union that is always on point. Union was the first streetwear shop I ever visited—its New York flagship, formally on Spring Street, caught my eye coming off the A train sometime around 2007, footing my way around Soho, learning what was where. Entering Union, I found neatly folded racks of t-shirts that made my eyes salivate; Undefeated, Mad Hectic, Huf, Original Fake, Stussy, Acapulco Gold, and Union’s logo tees themselves, which particularly slapped. At the time, it felt entirely new, and has just as quickly come to represent a halcyon age: the NYC shop shuttered in 2009, around the time many stores gave way to online retail. So I make it a point to roll to the L.A. outpost whenever I’m in town, just to connect to that part of my brain.

Union L.A. is a bit more polished than its NY predecessor, and these days is slightly priced up. I ironically felt at home rocking my Bode shirt in there—although, with its price tags in the mid-hundreds, Bode is a healthy step more expensive than even the highest end of what streetwear comfortably allows. With its passion for vintage, meticulously sourced patterns and prints, the company seems pretty anti-logo. Emily Bode, the brand’s designer and namesake, took to repurposing fabrics after growing up shadowing her elders through antique shops in Atlanta and Cape Cod. The quilts she patches up into shirts, jackets, and trousers are sourced from all over the world; the only unifying quality is how they came to be created, and only those in the know would actually recognize the logo-less Bode aesthetic in person. In a way, it stood out on the streetwear-hub of La Brea, where many sported head-to-toe logos in an effort to catalogue their brands of choice. Did I care whether anyone knew who made my shirt? I didn’t think so. Either way, no one in Union asked.

I jetted over to a small restaurant called Kismet, in Los Feliz, to join a late lunch. The waiter joked that I was like the fifth person at our table to order the blackberry & milk jam toast, which clearly sounded delicious and honestly kind of matched my shirt. The Bode piece had held up throughout the day, but the late afternoon breeze was getting chillier, so I threw on a Woolrich outer shirt I’d carried with me just in case. It features a heavy all-over-tribal/Navajo/Native-type print, that I fully realize, even in trying to describe it, is problematic. A younger friend of mine accurately called it “Kid Cudi drip.” But I kind of like its played-ness, and also haven’t been able to replace it functionally. (Emily? Little help?) I wasn’t afraid to clash-and-burn on this random day away from my home turf, and found that the whole crazy fit made me feel a bit more like the caricature of a sun-kissed hippie-type Los Angelean that I hold in the back of my head (as Cam’ron once aptly disclaimed, “no disrespect, niggas killed Big Poppa,” and, now, our prince Pop Smoke.)

I spent that dusk popping in and out of a pair of beautifully furnished home recording studios, built in the warm tradition of Laurel Canyon’s 60s psych-folk golden era. And sure enough, during this magic hour, I really felt my shirt on my body for the first time. The boxy cut leaving room at my sides for air to flow, the just-so-heaviness of the fabric, how seamless the whole thing felt. The moment came into vivid definition: Yes, I would sit cross legged on this sea-foam green couch and listen intently to freewheeling conversation between folks way more in tune with the universe than I. No, I wouldn’t wonder what time it was. Yes, I would cautiously keep in mind that Los Angeles' jaw-dropping sunsets and thick air and marble-still nights bear a menace, a ferocity, a sinister, twisted edge unlike any other place, that innocent people have been hurt here with cinematic macabre, that some of the city’s angels are of the fallen persuasion, that Danny Elfman is both a genius and weird as all fuck, and that my flight is pretty early tomorrow morning. Wait... damn, what time is it, though? Shit. Maybe I should get an Uber.

Matthew Trammell’s writing can be found in DAZED , The FADER , the New Yorker_ and more.