Introducing ULLA

Written by LAURA REGENSDORF
Photography by GRANT LEGAN

Adornment is never just a matter of surface decoration for the fashion designer Ulla Johnson. It’s a chance to thread together disparate references, each a portal to a faraway time or place. A saturated print in her spring 2026 collection summons the eggplant, clay, and leaf tones in a 1973 painting by Helen Frankenthaler. The previous season, Johnson paid tribute to her late mother, whose gold-leaf artworks inspired glints of lamé on the runway.

Since launching her self-titled label in 1998, Johnson has mined her particularly colorful life. Growing up in Manhattan gave her an early appreciation of Monet’s water lilies at the Museum of Modern Art, while travels with her two archaeologist parents sent her from the Moroccan desert to the Dalmatian coast. It’s fitting that her newest creative chapter—a fragrance collection called ULLA, now exclusively IN RESIDENCE at VIOLET GREY—involves the sensory realm so often linked with experience.

“Some of my strongest memories are connected to scent, things I can’t quite see but feel immediately,” says Johnson, who tapped the London-based perfumer Lyn Harris for the project. “There’s something witchy about the way she works,” Johnson adds, pointing to the “depth and sophistication” in Harris’s creations. The resulting three eaux de parfum read as personal snapshots. Adriatic Gold—with sunwarmed notes of jasmine, sandalwood, and fizzy citrus—is a nod to Johnson’s childhood summers spent on the island of Lokrum, a ferry ride from the Croatian city of Dubrovnik. Drift Rose looks to Montauk, on Long Island, where her three kids have spent weekends clamboring along the dunes; its namesake bloom is joined by cardamom, vetiver, and Sicilian lemon. Baroque Garden recreates a decadent backyard bouquet, here translated into Calabrian bergamot, ylang ylang, orris root, and vanilla absolute.

Perfume is resolutely intimate. “It evolves on the skin in a manner that’s less immediate and controlled than clothing,” says Johnson. “In a way, it’s alchemical, how scent becomes a part of each woman’s narrative.” At the same time, scent stirs feelings of wanderlust, particularly in this brand’s universe. The four candles suggest old-world souvenirs—Coral, Gold, Celadon, and Cowrie—while the Coral-scented incense showcases the know-how of a 400-year-old Japanese manufacturer.

For a designer who is also an inveterate collector of fiber art, folk costumes, and seashells, to single out just a few, the visual world of ULLA is equally considered. “I am a child of archaeologists with a great reverence for the past and for material culture, so I wanted to create objects that felt lasting, as though they have always existed,” says Johnson. The perfume flacons take after 19th-century snuff bottles, sized to nestle in hand. The ceramist Jonathan Yamakami designed the porcelain perfume cap, evocative of windswept dunes, and also the petal-like bowl for the candles. Another artist, Jane Yang-D’Haene, created the incense holder: a blossom unfurled in a delicate sprawl.

Treasures, all. “So much of what we do [at Ulla Johnson] is about how a woman herself puts herself together,” Johnson says of the opportunity for quotidian ceremony, for a sense of grounding alongside exploration. The challenge with ULLA was only in keeping it contained: “There is so much more we have to say.”