Ulla Johnson Fall 2025: A Gilded Departure

More about process than prints, fall 2025 was a departure for Ulla Johnson, who said she wanted to bring a new level of craft and materiality to her collection.

Upping the opulence, she celebrated the act of self-adornment with rich texture and metallics in a lineup that hewed toward the bohemian trend that’s been bubbling back up again, one that Johnson knows well.

The search for couture-level fabrics yielded the brilliant gilded cloque on the opening look, a rippling gold zip-front dress worn with a black turtleneck and cast flower cuff bracelets commissioned by French artist Julie Camisky, whose bronze sculpture anchored the runway on Sunday morning.

Johnson worked with a range of artisans. Claudy Jongstra, the Dutch textile artist known for monumental felted wool creations, hand-felted natural-dyed panels for one-of-a-kind coats that had a mottled look. Other artist partners hand-painted gestural gold brushstrokes onto noir chiffon gowns. Knits spanned rustic and craftsy to refined, with hand-embroidered crystals or crocheted rosettes.

Bohemian airy silk crepe gowns, Byzantine brocades and sheer bow blouses, skirts and dresses added to the rich lineup grounded in soft tailoring, colored leathers and shearlings for men and women.

“There was a bit of an homage to my mother,” Johnson said of her mom, Jasmina Draskovic Johnson, who recently passed. “I really trace so much of my work and my passions to the things that she has taught me. She was an archeologist, but also a real nomad who lived a thousand lives. One of those lives was painting icons. I remember so clearly the smell of turpentine, and she would sit there and apply the gold leaf layer by layer, to achieve that luster…that degree of craft…it was something she did to connect to her country,” Johnson explained of her mother’s Serbian heritage. “So there are all these threads that come through us.”

And live on and on.