Ghost Ranch, New Mexico
The Pre-Fall 2022 Campaign is situated in the vastly diverse landscape of Abiquiu, New Mexico. Inspired by Georgia O’Keefe’s paintings of ‘the faraway’, the New Mexico terroir through O’Keefe’s hand carries an emotional weight much as do the clothes of Johnsons design. Shapes are both languid and architectural, tracing the body as O’Keefe traced the contours of the desert.
Our mesmeric Corded Handloom Suiting, layered with geometric patterns of contrast white cording, echoes the optical juxtaposition of stark white rocks and black, cavernous shadows found at “The White Place’, our first point of interest in retracing O’Keefe’s steps. These three-dimensional shapes expand and trail along slim a-line silhouettes, creating an almost armor-like ensemble, resembling the uniquely dramatic topography at high noon.
Looking to O’Keefe’s highly prolific residency at Ghost Ranch, Johnson crafts super saturated motifs and pigments reminiscent of the Painted Desert, sweeping dunes composed of brilliant, stratified layers of color. Trailing florals motif floats against a gently crackled ground that bears a lustrous surface, painted in layers until it fairly glows with the effects of time and sun.
Tales of ochre and rich vermillion punctuate sky and water blues featured at Abiquiu Lake, a natural mirror that reflects and deconstructs a utopian idyll of brightly colored red and yellow hills, jagged white cliffs, pale greens of cedar, and bleached desert stones, much like the traditional patterns of cheetah and herringbone seen in the collection, that are reengineered to blurred, irregular effect.