Bode Recreation x Nike is Emily Bode’s love letter to American sports history

Emilie Bode is as much a student of history as she is a student of fashion, so it’s only natural that her first foray into sportswear is steeped in nostalgia—and filled with enough adorable details to transition from the playground to the street.

Launching April 18, Bode Rec. and Nike is a capsule of jerseys, knit sweaters, pants, sweatpants and jogging shorts with a lot of school spirit, as well as a reimagining of the Nike Astrograbber sneaker, originally developed in the 1970s in response to the invention of artificial turf. (The first Astrograbber model to debut on the field was immortalized on the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1974.)

The football and baseball mascots that come with the black leather or natural canvas sneakers are reproductions of commemorative mascots from the 1930s and 1940s given to members of high school and college sports teams.

Starting with the Nike collaboration, Bode Recreation is a new category for the American designer, who is a leader in incorporating the traditionally feminine crafts of quilting, patchwork and appliqué into luxury fashion for men and women.

“It was as important to what it means to us to launch athleisure and sportswear as it is to what sports means to America as a whole,” Bode said during a preview at her studio on Canal Street in Manhattan, where vintage trophies, sports equipment and history books were all around her. “The Nike collection and our collection revolve around the idea of ​​how sports influence what we think of as a good American citizen.”

Much of her research at the Nike campus in Beaverton, Ore., in family archives and history books “had to do with the rise of sports in high schools, colleges and boarding schools,” she said. “In 1903, the Public School Athletic League transformed what sports were for America and tied them to the birth of a virtuous child and the building up of body and mind. And the foundation of Nike also had many of these key ideas. Even the number one employee, Jim Johnson, was a coach, [as was cofounder Bill Bowerman, Oregon’s track coach] and the way to educate kids is to make them better people, not just athletes,” she said.

It taps into the sports traditions of the East and West Coasts in the capsule.

“We started in the 1770s, actually as early as 1756 with the Manhattan and Cape Cod boat races, then we got to the 1970s, which was a hugely influential time when television and full-time sportsmen shaped the sport as we know it today,” she said.

Cape Cod or Manhattan applique shirt on the front is a tribute to the 1756 boat race in New York Harbor between a Cape Cod sailing ship and a Manhattan whaling ship. It has two removable needles – an embroidered seashell and a hand-stitched mesh ribbon with tassels.

Vintage length striped wool sweater is inspired by an American hockey jersey from the 1970s; it ties at the neck with ribbons and features an embroidered Nike stripe on the back.

“The shorts are my favorite, they also have mesh in them so I can do things,” she said of the brown-toned, satin-striped jogging style with ‘Bode’ written as a personal monogram on the front hem. The shorts and sweatpants are also available in blue and white or black and white satin stripes. “I wanted to make sure the clothes were something you could actually wear,” she said of the “fashion meets function” mission.

Perhaps also to match with jeans, the mesh pin is decorated with felt ribbon and flower chain and can be adjusted to match with custom-made side buttons. A tonal black stripe is embellished with velvet ribbon and a couturier flower and is embellished with laurel green hand beading taken from a French hooded dress in the main Bode line. It pays homage to the 1922 Olympics, when women were first allowed to compete in the Games.

Ironically, Bode herself does not wear trainers as part of her daily uniform, although she does have Nike trainers to train in. She was drawn to Astrograbber because of its story. “When it was made in 1974, the color wasn’t right, so they colored them with Sharpies,” Bode said of the style designed by Bowerman and worn by NFL Hall of Famer Dan Fouts when he was a quarterback at the University of Oregon and an early supporter of Nike.

“With Bode, the idea is that you can take a picture of a person and not know what era they’re from. This shoe felt like that to me, whereas a lot of shoes don’t feel like that, especially sneakers, because they feel so technical,” she said.

Bode Rec. and Nike Collection, which retails from $160 to $380, will be available April 18 at bode.com and select Bode retailers and May 1 on the Nike Snkrs app and select Nike retailers.