Ulla Johnson (Q9404)
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Ulla Johnson is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Ulla Johnson |
Ulla Johnson is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
At a pre-fall appointment in her busy showroom Ulla Johnson reported that Beyoncé was photographed wearing a pair of her suede over-the-knee boots last month. It’s a little sign of the big ambitions powering Johnson’s brand. Beyond plans to open stores at a more regular cadence, Johnson is also pushing into new price categories, for special occasion dresses for example, but without leaving behind the customer base she’s built over 25 years in business.“What’s been very exciting for us is our continued evolution towards more refined materials and elegant silhouettes,” she said. “We can occupy the sort of white space where we can do these incredibly beautiful, super-considered silhouettes in the finest Italian fabrics, and still offer them in the $1,000 to $2,000 range, which is not really available,” with designer fashion becoming so out of reach.Among those super-considered pieces: an antique linen dress inset with arabesques of crocheted lace modeled on an antique tablecloth she found on a trip to Portofino; a dressy top and skirt set in silk chiffon jacquard printed with a scarf motif (they come in multiple colorways but the yellow is most striking); and a black dress with lively gold fringe that would be the talk of a summer wedding. Rather than actual raffia, which can feel like sandpaper, she used a faux version for a dress with a graphic black design treatment. A jacket in the same material and graphic motif was paired back to slouchy cargos in an abstract animal print.Keeping the long-time customers who come to her for more everyday pieces in mind, she trimmed easy-wearing compact knit dresses with crochet too, and made others with eyelet cut-outs. And her denim offering keeps growing; the novelty this season coming from a versatile double-breasted short-sleeved shacket that she showed with high-waisted flares.
6 December 2024
Elements of Lee Krasner’s 1970Cometpainting were printed on the panels that formed the centerpiece at Ulla Johnson’s show. The designer worked with the estate of the late artist for two years to secure permission to use it and two other pieces,Portrait in GreenandPalingenesis, as prints in her new spring collection.Johnson feels an affinity for Krasner. They’re both New Yorkers, both children of immigrants, and both mad for flowers and nature. “She talked about wanting her work to breathe and live. That spoke to me so much,” Johnson explained. “Women walk these clothes into life; it’s not a garment, it becomes part of the wearer.” In the show notes, Mary Gabriel, author ofNinth Street Women, a book about female artists of late 20th century New York, took the idea a step further: “Lee Krasner is no longer something we look at, it’s something we live in.”The Krasner prints decorated everything from cotton sportswear separates to midi dresses in multiple silhouettes. There’s breadth and depth to Johnson’s categories, which is both a symbol of and a key to her achievement, and as of today, it appears that she’s adding a new one. A lace tunic worn with flared jeans and a Krasner print coat, among other pieces, were worn by male models. “These were not looks cut for men, they were cut as part of our ready-to-wear, but then the boys came in and they looked incredible; it felt so natural,” Johnson said. “I think this false binary between womenswear and menswear seems quite outdated, so maybe, yes, it’s the official launch of men’s.”Craft is always a focus for Johnson, and this season there were day and evening styles on offer, including a shredded yarn top and skirt set and a black party dress with swags of gold bead fringe. On the more utilitarian side, she showed two-tone patch pocket denim, coated canvas field jackets, and cotton capes that conjured vintage military nurse uniforms.Not to draw too oblique a parallel, but Krasner and Johnson share another similarity. The former was under-recognized in her life, working in the long shadow cast by her famous husband Jackson Pollock. The latter, for her part, doesn’t always get the credit she deserves for building one of New York’s biggest fashion businesses, without much in the way of support from the industry, at least at first. These days, though, Johnson’s success is unignorable.
8 September 2024
Resort, cruise, holiday, pre-spring. As Ulla Johnson rightly pointed out, this season goes by a lot of names. “It has to encompass so many things,” she said, “but I decided not to be constrained by it, and instead feel liberated.” That’s not a bad motto for life, come to think of it, but how do you maintain a sense of openness in the face of so many responsibilities and in such a volatile environment? Johnson has an answer for that, too. “Ease,” she said, “was top of mind—even for evening.”She offered up the collection’s delicate lace dresses—a strappy style with a ruched bodice and a long-sleeved version, both in a soft shade of yellow—as party-worthy examples. For daytime, knit dresses (a growing category here) meet similar easy-wearing requirements. Johnson has options for both minimalists in compact knit solids with scallop details on the sleeves and hem, and more exuberant types in ribbed knits with variegated stripes.Of course, it wouldn’t be an Ulla collection without an emphasis on handcrafts. The most impressive entrant in that category this season was also the subtlest, a pantsuit made from land-loomed chintz mordant painted in a Tree of Life motif by the Indian artist Bappaditya Biswas over the course of many weeks. (The same pattern has been reproduced on crepe de chine dresses and separates that will be more scalable for production as well as more reasonably priced.) Also deserving of a mention are the oversized tunic and flared trousers in black-and-white fil coupé taffeta. That look has its own kind of ease; it’s all dressed-up but feels as good as a t-shirt and jeans.
4 June 2024
Ulla Johnson didn’t seem like the designer most likely to drop a reference to Judith Butler’sGender Troublebackstage this season, but that’s precisely where her inspiration began. “You know, I was a women’s-studies major in college,” she explained after her show at the Powerhouse Arts space in Brooklyn. “In the book she talks about how everything is a performance, gender is a performance. Everything here was a performance,” she added, gesturing to the area where the show had just taken place. “We were also really thinking about subverting femininity.”The best example of her gender play came from the groovy pinstripe fabric with stripes showing pressure points, as if someone had started drawing them but stopped and hesitated. They made for a handsome single-breasted jacket worn with high-waist flat-front pants (naturally worn with nothing underneath). Black velvet was opulently embroidered with white sequins in a slight floral pattern that also seemed like it was slowly unraveling—it was used on a slim, midi-length pencil skirt with an asymmetrical slit and on a long dress with a high crewneck and fitted long sleeves to great effect. A simple long-sleeve top and matching skirt set was maximized by a frenetic collaged paisley print in shades of yellow, neon orange, ochre, and black.A high point in the collection was the collaboration with K-Way performancewear, which included a poncho, a jumpsuit, and a super-cool midi-length skirt that zipped up the front, all made from Johnson’s signature blurred floral print in K-Way’s technical nylon. Johnson loves the outdoors, so for her they filled a necessity (“It’s all usually black!” she quipped), but they just seemed like essential pieces in anyone’s wardrobe, even if they never leave the city.There were some electrifying pieces made from boiled wool: simple shift dresses with ever-so-slightly voluminous skirts in insanely vibrant shades of orchid purple and marigold yellow—the latter styled with two matching sweaters, one worn underneath the dress and another tied around the neck like a scarf. Last minute, Johnson also decided to add some male models to the lineup. “You see women on men’s runways all the time, but you never see men on women’s runways,” she observed. “Why is that taboo?” The looks they wore were some of the strongest in the collection, and they really highlighted Johnson’s gift for color and silhouettes.
They included a semisheer purple turtleneck worn underneath a matching V-neck cardigan, bottle green wide leather pants, and an ochre yellow boiled-wool overcoat. There was also a purple turtleneck in boiled wool worn with shiny terracotta leather pants and a peach boiled-wool overcoat. The male models were “part of the exploration of slouchy, boyish cuts as part of the season’s conversation on the boundaries of womenswear and menswear,” said Johnson—meaning they wore women’s clothes and looked damn great.
11 February 2024
The colorful halter dress in slide 18 of Ulla Johnson’s lookbook is made from silk habotai hand-dyed in Bangalore, India, still boasting fine pleats and wrinkles from the dyeing process. It’s an easy knockout, as effortless to wear as it is impossible not to notice. Also vibrant: a bed jacket and strappy evening dress in a short, fuzzy, all over fringe. If Johnson’s collection registers as more exuberant than usual, it might be because she was looking at Niki de Saint Phalle, the eccentric French artist who famously built a 14-acre “Tarot Garden” in Tuscany of sculptures representing the tarot’s 22 major arcana so monumental that their heads clear the tops of the olive trees their nestled between. Not that there’s anything overtly referential to these looks.Johnson started her brand 25 years ago and her aesthetic is well-honed by now. Her showroom was bustling with buyers not because she flits from one esoteric theme to another, but because of how reliably she breathes new life into her polished bohemian dresses. This season, one midi-length number combines 10 different kinds of lace, and another is made from eight different kinds of knit. That hand-dyed silk habotai is particularly special—more of a 100-units kind of dress than a 1,000-units, she pointed out, saying, “in fashion, the question is always what’s next? I’ve been thinking about what’s necessary.” Her business is growing. Denim and knitwear are developing categories, as is footwear, which she recently started making with a licensee, but she’s expanding thoughtfully. The braided t-strap flats, for example, are made with vegan leather.
7 December 2023
New York is on a minimal streak, with designers looking back at the clean lines and monochrome palette of the late ’90s as a launching pad. But not Ulla Johnson. She’s never been a trend chaser, and this season her penchant for prints and obsession with handcrafts are setting her apart.Johnson held her show at Powerhouse Arts, the former Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company’s central power station that was converted by a generous philanthropist and Herzog & de Meuron into an about-to-open not-for-profit arts hub in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn. The warehouselike space was Ulla-fied with curved hanging screens suspended from the ceiling and nautilus shell sand paintings decorating the floor, chosen to help convey the theme she took for spring—“a meditation on the circle as a quintessential, divine form of nature.”The show included groups of vibrant printed looks, the result of a collaboration with artist Shara Hughes, the subject of a recentVogueprofile, who lent three landscapes for reproduction on dresses, daywear separates, and outerwear. Johnson is known for her printed frocks, but these were bolder and freer than her usual register; it was somehow clear that they began their lives as paintings and weren’t designed on a computer for reproduction on cloth.The circle theme was present from the opening look; the fiery sun is the centerpiece of Hughes’s paintingTuck. Go looking for circles elsewhere and they pop up on many pieces: on a lavish fil coupé used for a trench, in the gradated geometric crochet of a sleeveless dress, and in the pinwheel rosette technique, called “yo-yo,” of another willowy number. A group of lace-edge silk slip dresses and camisole-and-skirt combos provided a more understated counterpoint. Of course, the circles are of little consequence to Johnson’s customers; they’ll respond to these pieces because they’re special, feminine, and pretty.
10 September 2023
Ulla Johnson is weeks away from opening a long-planned Los Angeles store. “I’ve gestated it longer than my three children—combined,” she laughed at her showroom. The pandemic slowed progress on construction, and so did the weather; winter’s endless atmospheric rivers and their accompanying rains made finishing the exteriors complicated. There’s a bright spot, though: They produced the super blooms that form the backdrop of these pictures.Johnson’s new resort collection is as abloom with flowers as ever. One especially dazzling print features hand-painted blossoms over a trippy psychedelic ground. But as she looks toward the LA opening and other developments (one of which is a new Paris showroom that will help her brand grow internationally), she’s embracing other categories.Denim, to start with. There’s a range of nontraditional shapes in a bright shade of pistachio, like a jacket with blouson volumes and a flared mini. Knitwear is an increasingly substantial part of her lineup too, and she showed an extended range of options, from a red minidress with a gently flared hem in a compact knit to multicolored hand-crocheted matching sets. She’s also signed her first-ever license. It’s with an Italian shoe manufacturer that she says will help her bring the embroideries and other embellishments her ready-to-wear is known for to well-constructed footwear.As for embellishments, Johnson is expanding her vocabulary. The look book opens with a caftan in a discharge-printed burnout that conjures California’s sun-kissed hills (a green version looks more like ocean waves), and there’s an intricately patterned quilted jacket that features five separate fabrics. Probably the most striking piece is a coat in fuzzy brushed alpaca that has been treated with a rose gold foil to evoke the gilt sculptures of the Colombian textile artist Olga de Amaral.
7 June 2023
Ulla Johnson’s show was 65 floors up the new Spiral building in Hudson Yards. Reading into the location, Johnson seemed eager to show off a sleeker side of herself. She’s been honing and refining her haute bohemian vocabulary for more than 20 years, emphasizing handicrafts from around the world, earthy prints and colors, and pieces with lots of visual and three-dimensional texture. This collection was unmistakably Ulla—she warmed up the industrial setting with an extraordinary custom-made Moroccan rug and invited Black Belt Eagle Scout to perform—but there was subtle change afoot.In fact, it started from the feet up. If shoes say a lot about a person, the kitten-heel suede pumps in today’s show suggested that the Ulla Johnson woman has places to go, though the fringe kept them from reading as too “sensible.” She hasn’t given up on romance, but a classically tailored one-button black blazer signaled a new seriousness, even if it was paired with a ruffled net skirt. If memory serves, it’s Johnson’s first go at wear-to-work tailoring. There was a full pantsuit—belted jacket and relaxed flares—in a dusty blue agave. Also new: shirts, pants, and skirts in lacquered leather, some hand-painted with single blooms, and a number of glossy puffer coats.Last season, Johnson put her first evening gown on the runway. It’s getting a great customer response in stores, so she revisited the category, cutting a one-shoulder party dress and a shorter tiered trapeze in emerald green silk cloqué. A two-piece dress in gold cloqué consisted of an off-the-shoulder ruffled crop top and tulip skirt. Fancy but not formal is the vibe she was channeling with a cropped angora knit tank top and a silk tulip skirt in monochrome copper, as well. The star of the show, however, just might’ve been a pleated and shibori dyed silk halterneck sundress. Very much in Johnson’s wheelhouse and very wantable.
13 February 2023
Nadine Ijewere photographed Ulla Johnson’s new lookbook in Jamaica. The lush tropical setting is an apt match for the collection, which vibrates with color, print, and texture. A scroll through the pre-fall lineups released so far reveals a sea of beiges and browns. Not here. The brightly patterned looks in slide 1 are sewn locally using silk habotai “clamp printed” in Bangalore, and no two panels are alike.Johnson is keen to incorporate that kind of human touch into her offering, even as her brand grows by the season. Some of the denim, an expanding category for the designer, has been hand-painted with results she described as halfway between camouflage and a watercolor. The crochet group is an obvious example of her devotion to craft; some of this season’s iterations are constructed completely with round shapes, lending them a particularly homespun feel.All that said, Johnson is also focused on elevation, which she achieved this season via both fabric development and silhouette. It was only on her spring runway that she showed her first real evening gown. Though the fancy dresses here are hardly traditional, they nonetheless impress, especially an open-back long dress in a lurex jacquard whose densely patterned surface shimmered like a landscape painting, and a cape-top a-line gown embroidered in the style of Serbian textiles that Johnson collects—her mother is Serbian.A Los Angeles store, long in gestation, is set for an April opening. This collection, which delivers about a month later, will be as at home in that sunny setting as it was in Jamaica.
7 December 2022
Ulla Johnson has lately been making a tour of New York’s grandest public institutions. Lincoln Center, the New York Public Library, and, for today’s spring 2023 show, the Brooklyn Museum’s Beaux-Arts Court. The message this series of venues sends is that Johnson’s independent American brand has weathered the challenges of the pandemic and come out more confident on the other side. Not all of her peers will be able to say that. The reason why she can is because she knows herself and her customers very well.Recently her clients have been asking for more occasionwear, so we saw what qualifies as the first-ever Ulla Johnson ball gown on the runway, only she didn’t make it in a predictable silk taffeta or stuffy silk faille, but in amaltinto(or mist-dyed) trench material the color of faded roses, which gave its pouf bodice and bubble-skirt silhouette a laid-back yet still special spirit. “I never want anything to feel like it’s wearing the woman,” and not the other way around, she explained. A shorter trapeze-shaped party dress in the same material in a soft shade of jade was layered over a mesh tank for a similar relaxed vibe.Color played a starring role here: see the deeply pigmented purple denim and the sunflower yellow of a “three-piece suit” consisting of a sleeveless jacket, bell-bottoms, and bandeau top. She said Lee Krasner’s unlikely juxtapositions were a starting point. But Johnson’s main preoccupation is and always has been handicrafts. A sweaterdress with a loose fringed hem was entirely hand-knit from silk ribbon, and a sleeveless column was hand-crocheted. The striped blanket dress with side cutouts was hand-loomed in Guatemala, while the shibori-dyed numbers were done in Bangalore. “It’s exciting to be able to really start working with the communities that we were having a difficult time accessing over the past few years,” said Johnson. An embroidered denim jacket and jeans were done in Los Angeles with a group that uses antique chain stitch machinery. It pays to do that kind of research; they don’t look like anything else out there right now.
11 September 2022