“So much of what we do is about the woman in motion,” Ulla Johnson said, adding that she’s come to realize that, “celebrating female artists and amplifying women’s voices is kind of one of my life’s great works.”
Shot on the streets of Paris, her resort collection look book upheld these two statements. Johnson said she worked with Czech artist Anna Zemánková for the season’s colorful palette and intricate, Art Brut floral drawings that adorned fluid dresses and uplifted great new trench and cropped jacket outerwear — each ideal for the woman on the go.
Having her own direct-to-consumer business and retail stores has also given Johnson the ability to test and incubate new categories, including outerwear. “We are opening the store in Madison [Avenue] this fall. Our woman is there — I’m from the Upper East Side, although I moved to Brooklyn, so it feels like a real homecoming for the brand,” she explained.
A new wave fringed tailored coat also nicely played into the collection’s ethos of movement and irregularity, or, “not wanting anything looking too perfect or studied, but rather injecting that handmade undoneness,” she said. Ditto to a beautiful gilded orange fringed frock, which addressed her growing specialty eveningwear business and increase each season in elevated fabrications, also seen via an Italian hand-done crinkled minidress with fluted, petal-like hem.
It’s a balance she continues to uphold across categories and through styles developed with global artisans. Highlights of resort include hand-built leather flowers crafted in her studio that decorated more figure-hugging tops and dresses; new takes on her Italian made handbags (including her first tote carry-all), and beautiful crochet styles inspired by vintage bedspreads seen in Mallorca last fall that the designer reinterpreted with artisans in Peru, to name a few.
With 25 years in business, Johnson is continuing building her American legacy brand, using it as a platform to uplift the voices of global female artisans while successfully delivering fantasy-driven, wearable wardrobing to her global customer.
