You don’t just glance at a Johanna Ortiz dress and walk away—you stare intently at the bold floral prints, the frothy ruffles, and billowy feminine silhouettes that salute Ortiz’s Colombian roots and picture yourself in one of her designs, salsa dancing on an island. (The city she is from, Cali, is known as the world capital of salsa.) Thanks to H&M, your dream of owning a Johanna Ortiz dress has become a financial reality. Ortiz’s collection, which showed this year at Paris fashion week, is usually only available at luxury retailers.
Following the success of its Giambattista Valli collaboration, H&M is dipping into uncharted waters with its first-ever collaboration with a Latin American designer. Like its previous designer collection, Johanna Ortiz’s line will follow a two-drop model, starting with a four-piece appetizer complete with gowns in varying lengths and necklines, all made from floral prints culled from Ortiz’s archive.
Ortiz designed a knee-length tunic dress with a v-neck, a longer v-neck gown with a wrap front, and two floor-length key-hole dresses to be released on December 3. Ortiz will return with an expanded version of the collection in March 2020.
H&M
H&M
H&M
H&M
“The prints all come from my obsession with the flowers, the palm trees and the beautiful colors I am blessed to see out the window when I wake up at home in Cali, in my native Colombia,” Ortiz said in a statement. “The imprint of Latin America and its uniquely festive atmosphere is something that can be felt in each Johanna Ortiz design, so I’m thrilled that so many women in the world will have a little piece of Colombia in their wardrobes thanks to the Johanna Ortiz x H&M collaboration.”
The pricing for the Johanna Ortiz x H&M collection has not yet been announced.