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Just weeks before Ulla Johnson's New York Fashion Week debut that season, we created a "catwalk in the sky" for her brand. Designed by Trish Andersen and Andrew Ornedjack, the runway featured panels of rugs tufted in New Zealand wool and Tencel art silk blends. Varying cut and loop pile heights added texture, while a clear path ensured the models could walk safely.

The installation was a marvel. The rugs' bold colors and patterns created a vibrant contrast against the New York City skyline, injecting life and warmth into the surrounding concrete and steel.

This project marked the beginning of an ongoing and wonderful collaboration between stitch rugs and Ulla Johnson. Since then, we've produced numerous rugs for her luxury boutiques worldwide, from Paris to Los Angeles, with many more on the way!

more about Ulla, below:

Born and raised in Manhattan, the daughter of archaeologists, Ulla Johnson honed her signature style between the streets of New York and the far-flung destinations of their family travels. Her eponymous line, founded in 1998 just after her graduation from university, immediately caught the attention of the fashion press.

Growing from a handful of directional boutiques and with an early endorsement from Barneys New York, Ulla Johnson’s collection has gained a dedicated following and the support of retailers across the US, Europe, Australia, and Asia. She has never wavered on her steadfast attention to the details of construction that have become her hallmark, basing each of her collections on a foundation of natural fibers, beautiful finishing, and ease of fit and form.

Ulla lives in Brooklyn with her husband and three children.

Alongside sub_studio, we were commissioned to produce oversized rug art for the iconic Burberry, to be displayed at three flagship locations worldwide.

We created designs in different color palettes for the London, Milan, and New York stores. Incorporating a variable cut pile height weaving technique, we introduced a "3D pattern" to the rugs and evoked the bi-tonality of Burberry's branding at the time.

To enhance depth and volume, we integrated the brand's iconic emblem in a contrasting loop pile. This textural and scultupural design language has since been incorporated into Burberry's retail stores worldwide.

more about sub_studio below:

SUBSTUDIO is a design firm founded in 2015.

Ingrid A Schmidt and Hannah Dewhirst, both Assistant Professors in University of Kentucky’s School of Interiors, are co-founders of the collaborative design and research practice SUBSTUDIO. With backgrounds in architecture, interiors, contemporary art, and fabrication, SUBSTUDIO builds immersive sensorial environments that deeply engage the body, context, and culture. Weaving together studio-based hand craft, digital fabrication, robotics, and large-scale factory production, SUBSTUDIO is able to fine-tune visual and experiential complexity. One arm of our studio based research - custom textiles and rugs - has been tested and tuned extensively at large scale for international audiences. SUBSTUDIO has been commissioned to custom design, fabricate, deliver and install over 3,500 sf of tufted rugs for fashion brands Bottega Veneta and Burberry in numerous global locations, and in multiple exhibitions around the United States. 

SUBSTUDIO offers a variety of custom design services, specializing in color, material, texture, and pattern. Much of our work is focused on achieving immersive depth with dimensional textiles for floor and wall applications. Both principals of our firm are trained as architects and consider all of our work as it responds to circulation, site lines, and spatial dynamics. While designing, we consider innovative opportunities to best activate the space while optimizing manufacturing, installation, shipping ease, and after-life of the work.

For this project, we collaborated with Trish Andersen to create a multi-part stairway rug for on-site installation at Maison Karl Lagerfeld during Design Miami: Paris.

In her signature style, Trish infused the space with color, height, texture, and an overall sense of joy through her design. The rug juxtaposed hand-dyed blends of New Zealand wool and Tencel art silk with the historic black and white marble stairs, wrought iron, and magnificent wall paneling.

Alongside other artists' work from SCAD, the Trish-designed rug served as a path, connecting visitors to the multi-level exhibition space. It also provided a sense of grounding as they returned to the inspired common area defined by the rug itself


more about trish, below:

As an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in Dalton, Georgia "The Carpet Capital of the World”, Trish Andersen's initial attraction to the process of tufting was a means to reconnect with and explore her roots. Years after attending the Savannah College of Art and Design and moving on to live and work in Brooklyn, New York, she began using the medium as an examination of the notion that a thing or a way of being can run in our blood; that perhaps by observing the characteristics of personal origin and establishing commonality and community around those that reverberate in the present, one may be able to begin unearthing the elusive authentic self.

Combining fibers gathered from field, sheep, and those developed on a factory floor, Andersen proves that there is always room for both the vibrant and the muted, the sleek and the wild, cut and looped, soft and cumulus, the dense and the coarse; the unexpected and varied tactile quality of her work allows the eyes to open to an emotional one. Her work speaks to the truth that whether they are temporal, cultural, geographical, or interpersonal, boundaries inevitably bleed, and the results are often quite stunning.

Accepting commissions worldwide, Trish creates site specific installations, fiber works, and collaborates on product creation for clients such as Coca-Cola, Design Miami, Kimpton Hotels, Google, BlackRock Financial, Shaw Contract, and Ulla Johnson, among many others. She lives in Savannah, Georgia with her husband, artist Michael Porten, their son Walter, four cats, and a few thousand balls of yarn.

For our initial project with the iconic Bottega Veneta, we collaborated with Victoria Rose Adrien and sub_studio to create rug art installations for a pop-up event in Detroit, Michigan.

These pieces showcased our initial explorations into architectural tufting. Our robotic tufting technology and craftsmanship helped bring to life these interlocking, almost alien, splatter forms.

This project fostered an appreciation for the possibilities offered by us and a desire for further exploration, which led to another boutique in Miami, where we implemented a completely different design. This time, we opted for a more subdued approach, using a shaggy cut pile pattern in New Zealand wool to complement the store’s custom set and furniture design.

Following months of dedicated experimentation to match Bottega Veneta's signature greens, we began producing rugs for their boutiques worldwide, from China to various locations across Europe and the US.