Ulla Johnson’s Spring Collection Is a Painterly Ode to Lee Krasner

The fashion designer spent two years carefully translating the late Abstract Expressionist’s gestural canvases onto her airy, free-flowing garments

February 7, 2025

Ulla Johnson. Photo: Weston Wells

Ulla Johnson has long felt a deep affinity for Lee Krasner, the late trailblazer of Abstract Expressionism whose highly gestural works ricocheted across genres and styles but whose achievements were overshadowed by her husband Jackson Pollock. “There are so many similarities I felt between myself and Lee,” the fashion designer and entrepreneur tells Galerie of them both being New Yorkers, children of immigrants, and lovers of nature. Johnson, who keeps a residence in Montauk, had visited Pollock-Krasner House at The Springs in East Hampton multiple times and suspected Krasner’s “gestural boldness, love of nature, and celebration of color” would translate beautifully onto her label’s signature ruffled garments.

At the same time, Johnson remembered Krasner specifically mentioning how she wanted her work to breathe and come alive. “The runway feels like such an apt way, a quite literal way, for that to happen,” Johnson mused. So she spent two years convincing and collaborating with Krasner’s estate to secure permissions for three seminal paintings—Portrait in Green (1969), Comet (1970), and Palingenesis (1971)—to grace her Spring/Summer 2025 collection. “They had never done anything of this nature,” Johnson says of the estate, which was involved every step of the way. “They wanted to see everything and make sure that we were really honoring what [Krasner] would’ve wanted and elevating the language around the canvases.”

Ulla Johnson Spring/Summer 2025. Photo: Courtesy of Ulla Johnson

With painterly finesse, the resulting collection lovingly translates the three artworks onto the label’s in-demand categories of eveningwear and midi dresses while reinterpreting them in unexpected styles like sportswear separates. Johnson, who often travels to far-flung destinations to meet artisans and source the highest-quality materials possible, naturally worked with a rarefied Italian print house to create the range. Each is united in a palette of bright pink and green brushstrokes that swirl among bursts of black and white; they join neon-hued lace tunics and hand-crocheted dresses whose gilded embroideries faithfully mimic Krasner’s free-flowing artistic language. “The life in her paintings is irrepressible,” Johnson says. “Her tones are bright, the shapes open and free expressions of joy.”

A similar ethos has also emerged as a key hallmark of Johnson’s eponymous label, which has fiercely resisted fads and fast fashion for its milestone 25 years in business, instead focusing on filling gaps in the market for “things made with beauty,” she says. And for her dedicated customer base of stylish women seeking elevated bohemian-chic statement pieces that feel effortlessly suited for the everyday, the collaboration and shared sensibilities with Krasner may come as no surprise. Her boutiques in New York, Amagansett, and Los Angeles cultivate a laid-back air of livability and abound with nods to art and the tranquil landscapes that so deeply resonated with Krasner. “I feel like had she been able to give her blessing, she would have,” Johnson says. “This was an important way to shine a light on her incredible body of work.”