Ulla Johnson Spring 2026 Collection is a Stunning Runway Masterpiece

Ulla Johnson unveiled a 57-look collection for Spring/Summer 2026 inside the Cooper Hewitt Museum on 91st and 5th Avenue — a venue steeped in personal meaning. As a native New Yorker, Johnson described the moment as full circle, returning to the very museum her mother once brought her to as a child.

The collection, inspired by abstract expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler, unfolded like a living canvas. Textures came alive — fringes, ruffles, feathers, lace — creating a maximalist’s dream. Silhouettes were punctuated with balloon sleeves, echoing the dramatic proportions seen at Aknvas and Christian Siriano this season.

Color moved beyond the familiar pastels of spring. Yes, there were peaches and lavenders, but the standout tones were sunset-inspired: mustard, rust, and indigo blues — a direct nod to Frankenthaler’s painting Moontide.Snippets of a 1993 Frankenthaler interview played as a backdrop, where she mused, “‘Beautiful,’ which is always a tricky word, but now it’s become an incendiary word.” 

Against her words, models drifted down the runway like brushstrokes across canvas — embodying beauty not as something proven, but simply as fact.This season, Johnson proposes a new kind of spring romanticism — one where texture takes precedence over florals, and beauty, far from obsolete, is reimagined as art in motion.