LAmoodboard.com
CHELSEA | 8 SEPTEMBER 2024 | NEW YORK CITY
Ulla Johnson is always my favorite show at New York Fashion Week. Her soft flowy perennially boho looks may not push the fashion envelope like Khaite (starkly in contrast) or Tanner Fletcher, but she’s brought a peaceful earthy (and earthoned) 70’s vibe to New York fashion. When everyone’s doing suits, she’s doing them softer. Her use of color, craft, fabric, even her choice of models, is consistent – and consistently lovely, with the highest quality. And if you spotted the 2019 Architectural Digest story on her Fort Greene townhouse (the aesthetic equivalent of her collections), you know she’s got a serious through line that’s done her very well.
A consistently big seller, she showed 85 looks at her spring/summer 2025 show in a Chelsea warehouse – then produces all of them. Dubbing it “On Transformation,” basing on text from biographer, historian of all things female and art journalist Mary Gabriel’s Ninth Street Women – her tome on modern female painters Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler. Ulla used it as a jumping off point on how artists and designers take raw materials and transform them into newness. Her prints and colors for spring were clearly influenced by modern art:the opening silk dress a drapey sheath of a Kandinsky like print of fuschia, emerald, olive, black and white, matched with pithy fuchsia Mary Jane shoes.
One print that turned up a lot: a thin butter yellow fabric dotted with crimson 3D flowers. There were short bubble dresses, jumpsuits, midis, and some of the most beautiful ruched blouses since Tom Ford’s 2003 YSL show. While many looks are ornate, some were actually stark: a sexy crystal embedded cami tucked into a shiny leather wrap skirt, a butter lace tunic over loose black trousers. I particularly fell in love with the blouses: the aforementioned ruched one (can’t resist the ruche), a white blouse/tunic with a giant pussybow, and a pale apricot cape blouse that ruffles over toast toned leather pants. Earthtones of pumpkin and spice (or maybe just pumpkin spice) contrasted those bright silk paint splash looks. The jackets and coats were all done in unique fabrics: clay polyurethane, shaggy diagonal striped bathrobe coats. The mix of textures and shapes, soft music, multi color hanging scrims, created drama laced with fantasy and modern art.
There’s a reason Ulla Johnson’s so successful, year after year: the lightness of her clothes belies her depth of knowledge and emotion. Another great factor for her shows: her crowd of gorgeous women from 20 to 70 all worship at the altar of that aesthetic: long silk skirts, nubby oversized knits, flats – they don’t walk, they waft. Like they walk on water.
CHELSEA | 8 SEPTEMBER 2024 | NEW YORK CITY
CHELSEA | 8 SEPTEMBER 2024 | NEW YORK CITY