Ulla Johnson looked to Expressionist Helen Frankenthaler as lodestar for her spring collection, the next chapter after collaborating with female artists Lee Krasner, Anna Zemánková and Shara Hughes.
“She struggled with the meaning of the word beautiful,” Johnson said of Frankenthaler’s work, adding that she also thinks of the idea in her collections.
Inviting the fashion crowd uptown to the Beaux Arts Cooper-Hewitt Museum, a few blocks away from her new Upper East Side boutique, Johnson’s idea of beauty is as ornate as her location, explaining that “pretty and feminine” are ideas not often taken to mean “serious or powerful.” Questioning if these ideas are reductive, Johnson is digging in, embracing it full on.
Enter her range of gauzy, abstract, color-filled — by way of Frankenthaler’s work — pieces with embellishments — fringe, feathers and ruffles abounded. There was a lot of transparency and buoyancy in the movement of the collection. “That gave the sense of lightness, this weightless way of feeling both powerful and completely yourself,” she said of the prairie dresses, printed denim, bow blouses and lightweight capes.
She centered three of Frankenthaler’s paintings — “Western Dream,” “Nature Abhors a Vacuum” and “Moon Tide” — which gave her a bright color palette of green, purple, peach and rose mixed with caramel browns on floating dresses with ruffles; coats, and even realized in sequin on skirts and tops. A few handbags also came in bright colors, each inspired by movement.
The collection was strongest when she showed restraint, like a strapless dress where the colors blended to the floor or a hand crochet knit dress. Other pieces might be a heavy lift, with a mix of ideas with peplums and volume filled sleeves creating a bit of sartorial dissonance.
“I think a sense of life and joy is something that I’ve really sought to convey,” she said of her collection.
