Acne Studios (Q2505)
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multidisciplinary luxury fashion house based in Stockholm, Sweden
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Acne Studios |
multidisciplinary luxury fashion house based in Stockholm, Sweden |
Statements
1996
Creative Director
2008
executive chairman
This collection and show’s germination dates back to last year, when Jonny Johansson saw an installation by the artist Jonathan Lyndon Chase at Sadie Coles HQ in London. Backstage tonight Johansson recalled how he was affected and inspired by the work’s “tenderness, playfulness, and spontaneity. And it made me think that I’d been going too mad for fashion and that I wanted to do something different and maybe take more of a risk.”Due credit to that thought’s catalyst was the new installation by the artist within the Acne Studios runway space tonight. The raised curated arrangement of layered furniture and sculpture adorned with a front row of mostly Acne-wearing show watchers encapsulated this liminal spanning of fashion and contemporary art.Lyndon Chase’s explorative approach to domesticity, privacy, and what he called “interior moments” was reflected in a collection that seemed sometimes upholstered by materials drawn from interior design. The garments also seemed to reflect an ambiguity within—or at least an ambivalence toward—the codes of identity that clothes so often encapsulate. Like much of the furniture, the garments were fundamentally conventional, yet through the process of making had become altered and amplified to interrogate that convention.This was fun. The models wore crushed coiffures and librarian’s rimless spectacles—possibly inspired by Johansson’s childhood piano teacher—as they walked past in clothes you sensed they would (and should) never grow into entirely inhabiting. Tailoring in padded mock-croc and leather overcoats was oversized and amplified. Knit looks were artfully disarrayed as if put on while still entangled from the dryer. Shrunken tops in what looked like boiled-wool blankets were frayed and picked at along their edges.All this made great context for some masterfully meta mom jeans worn under fitted tops in floral-pattern waxed tablecloth coverings (at least apparently). These jeans were fitted at the waist but then flew wide and straight at the hip, down either to a multibreak hem or a wide-cuff edged in more florals (just like some cool kids used to). Evening looks included jersey dresses in angularly layered irregular seams of differently printed fabrics—the result of some fierce argument at the haberdashery—and an endearingly klutzy lampshade gown spattered with bows: formal abnormal.
25 September 2024
Years in the making, the opening of Acne Studios HQ in Paris was decidedly worth the wait. There will be more to reveal soon, but let’s just say that the building—located in the 10th arrondissement—gives off a carefully calibrated clash of opulent and raw, with the spaces as well-suited to a party or photo shoot as today’s showroom.From a crinkled patent leather sofa in the brand’s signature pink (nicely done, Max Lamb), Jonny Johansson explained how this season’s lineup revolved around the notion of superheroes and how most of us have an article of clothing that makes us feel more kick-ass. For some, this might already be the Acne Studios extra-long colorful fuzzy scarf. But Johansson was thinking on a whole other level of hero piece.Cue a multitude of looks covered with Wonder Woman, Catwoman, and other DC femme fatales in an official collaboration with Warner Bros. Discovery Global Consumer Products. From Pop art patterns to patches on bags, they prompted the inevitable gender-charged question. “Women are the real superheroes—or they have more superpowers, at least,” Johansson replied. “They’re violent but in another way.” Subtext: sexier—and nods to fetishwear cropped up in a suit piped with silicone and cotton short shorts that teased with holes. Clearly, Acne Studios doesn’t need latex suits to offer up some kink.Elsewhere the collection doubled down on last season’s ingenious trompe l’oeil printed jeans (actually a cotton canvas), tricked out with illusion chains and charms or stacked with studded belts—no need to further accessorize—while also introducing an elaborately distressed jacquard denim. Despite the two extremes of technique, the difference in photos might be barely discernible. And there were plenty more novel ideas, too, including a cargo in a fluid fabric, a side-zip warm-up pant in supple leather, and a camera bag that was almost named Photoshopper. Second-skin mesh tops were printed with Johansson’s old band logo from the ’90s. What is his superpower? “Guitars,” he replied. “You can listen to music, but you can also make music, and you can live music.” Put another way and specific to this fun and frisky season, if we can’t be sexy rock stars (or superheroes), we can at least dress the part.
19 June 2024
Denim and leather are the meat and drink upon which Acne Studios has sustained itself and flourished since its late 1990s founding. Backstage today Jonny Johansson confessed that over the years he has sometimes hungered for other design outlets—“I was like: ‘I need something else. Ineedit!’”—which is how tailoring, knitwear, accessories and all the other categories Acne covers have entered its lexicon. Denim and leather, however, remain the source.Today Johansson returned to them as the foundations of a collection through which he built out a much broader Acne edifice. It was informed and inspired by two works, named Chairs in Rubber, by the Estonian artist Villu Jaanisoo: these were made from recycled tires sliced into strips and then fashioned into beyond human-size, vaguely sinister thrones. Some guests were seated in the middle of the runway on smaller reconstructions of them. Johansson said that Jaanisoo’s “mechanical treatment” of objects designed to envelop the human form had accelerated the approach to the clothes we saw tonight.Denim, the first of Acne’s twin poles, was rendered by spray or soaking to variously carry a rusty, oily or metallic surface sheen. Thus mechanized it was cut into high collared truckers, jeans, full-length trucker-shirt dresses, or strapless dresses. These treatments were echoed in the matte, paint-like coating applied to thick rib knit dresses.Leather was delivered in two main ways. Broadly ruched bodies and dresses in smoothly finished, supple hides meant to recall saddlery were contoured with wide zippers meant to echo those of a handbag. This was part of a broader story that saw bag straps accent shoes, and padlocks used as earrings, shoe hardware, and in gunmetal necklaces: a cross-category mash-up designed to question where one began and the other ended.The second leather story came via three dresses that were as stiffly rigid as the zippered pieces were soft and yielding. These had been shaped through repeated wetting to hold their form, which was pre-molded to fit around the bodies of their wearers. Their sculptural aspect was further reflected in the colored printed dresses that featured a sculpture of a renaissance winged cherub.Further elements in Johansson’s fit-out included heavy, high-volume coats in Icelandic shearling and further versions in faux furs. Skin-tight short-legged bodysuits (also zippered) and layered and light ribbed-knit base layers were racy in a vaguely automotive sense.
Conversely, two dresses whose bodicing flared at the hip to allow the skirts to fall widely from them, and some looks in a tailoring check, were more stately. “Sometimes you really want to crash things,” Johansson observed. His collection of curated collisions did just that.
28 February 2024
“When I see people wearing denim today it seems new again,” said Jonny Johansson over speakerphone from Sweden. Kept at home by family matters, he was checking in to the presentation in Paris, where Acne Studios was unveiling the results of the creatively fired founder’s return to a genre he calls “rebellious denim.” The fabric is Acne’s staple and cornerstone, but often in this most “elevated” collection is shown as a side-dish, if at all. Today it proudly returned to the podium.Johansson shot this lookbook on Yves Tumor, an artist he says typifies the shapeshifting chimera spirit he worked his denim to amplify. He said: “when I was with Yves they were always moving and their look was always changing: not considered but also composed.”Much of the denim was printed with trompe l’oeil effects, like chains and straps. “This is very surface, which feels very contemporary-futuristic as well as sustainable,” he said. Similarly, the ribbed knit baselayer pants and top that appeared painted were smooth to the touch, their image embedded by print in the fabric.Cyberpunk—a word now over 40 years old—seemed revived (updated of course) in the articulated bulbous-legged work-jeans, strappy shorts, fluoro accents, and hypertight shirting. Johansson said he swung between a loose high, skinny low silhouette and its opposite as the only point of order in a collection that was otherwise riotous. Shearling lined boots with back pocket uppers, denim bags and candy toned super-sized fur hats were amongst the additions that felt both throwback and fresh. A skirt printed with a black gloved hand sticking its middle finger upwards nicely captured a mood that never gets old because there is always a new generation stepping up to feel it.
17 January 2024
“Sometimes there’s a lot of kerfuffle,” said Jonny Johansson before this show: “Ideas, ideas, ideas—spinning on ideas but not really directing.” That’s not to say there weren’t concepts in a collection that collided construction sites with that moment when the lights come up as the club closes—spaces of transition—and garnished the results with the feminocentric archeology of artist Katerina Jebb. But there was plenty of execution too in this engaging Acne show. And it all went back to denim.“It’s always been the most important product, and I feel strongly about it. But I also felt embarrassed—[as if people were saying,] ‘It’s not real fashion’—and I wanted to be a real designer, if that makes sense,” said Johansson. Today he moved on from those early-collection hoodoos by going back to make runway reclamation of the five-pocket pant in denim that was the foundation of Acne’s success. Its imprint was evident on the back of a flying-waist gray skirt or under a layer of chalky cracked plaster or at the waist of a heat-pressed red leather coat. A lace trucker jacket was similarly layered in plaster, as were denim miniskirts. Denim was under renovation and restoration.Elsewhere, scanned relics from Jebb’s suite Physical Evidence of a Woman (a pair of false eyelashes, some chaotically discarded pantyhose) were placed on garments as imprinted fossils of femininity. Tufts of feather sprouted from a ribbed jersey dress and vest; a trench was lumpily cut to look as if done up in the dark; and tulle pom-poms were dotted in disarray across sheer plain and check dresses.There was a fun trio of dark brown leather coat, teak leather skirt, and off-white leather minidress that came with conjoined hands-free handbags. Skirts of ragged jersey were articulated to sit off the hip, suspended. Vest tops and bras were entangled in a morning-after-the-night-before inversion of the conventional, reflected in the enormous sunken and fracturing disco ball from which the models came out to walk. The square-studded jeans that closed the show had a glint of a return toward something more conventionally put together. Kerfuffle-free—or at least almost—this Acne outing offered directionally disheveled and deconstructed womenswear paradigm pieces aplenty.
27 September 2023
Jonny Johansson elected to ship out on a truncated but still transformative Grand Tour as he shaped this menswear collection, traveling to Venice late last October. Of course the Swede swung south for the art, the architecture, and the Thomas Mann vibes, however he said his chief objective “was to explore the psychology of how you change your look when you travel, how you are inspired to dress differently in order to shape a different alter ego.”That experience-fueled consideration served to turbo-charge Johansson’s customary eclecticism to new heights. The central route of this worn itinerary was directed around his personal obsession with denim, a fabric that wears its use, experience, and movement like a diary. The designer created raw undyed denim jeans that were printed with a collaged patchwork of his own vintage pieces, creating a sort of meta-vintage melange. These would have looked good with a similarly collaged soft pink and black check button-up shirt. Elsewhere a jacquard weave monogram on pale denim acted as a kind of branded worn postcard.One highlight of this seasonal Acne trip was a series of items created with the Swedish ceramic artist Per B. Sundberg. These includedMars Attacks!–reminiscent death’s head curios and unsettling prints of cutesy animals and distorted wraith-like figures on garments that were treated to have a glassy finish, as if the images were entombed in glass. The designer said visiting the famous glass blowers of Murano had fired the idea for these.Pink but grungy velour pants (certainly not Barbiecore), studded garment dyed dungarees, swimwear with sexually competitive messaging, leather wrap skirts, footprint-print knits, and the house soccer shirt were also present in Johansson’s suitcase. A deep purple flared-collar, shirred-waist doublet—quite New Romantic—was his concession to dressing local. This was an Acne collection whose rails were a pleasure to travel through.
21 June 2023
With crystal strands dripping from twisted tree trunks and psychedelic crochet flowers in full bloom, the stage was set for an enchanted forest at Acne Studios tonight. For creative director Jonny Johansson, the fantastical reference was rooted in memories of his childhood growing up in northern Sweden, where the backyard was, as he put it, “infinite woods.” Now a longtime resident of Stockholm, Johansson has built the Scandi brand on a decidedly urban aesthetic, one that first leaned into hardworking denim and cool outerwear. The new collection was presented as a nostalgic exploration of the natural world through a city dweller’s lens.Models stomped out like bleary-eyed wood nymphs on their way to some all-night rave, decked out in skinny lace-up leather pants and cropped moto jackets that were painted to look like flaky white birch trees and moss green crochet slip dresses studded with flowers that gently unraveled on the bias. Johansson described the distressed look and handwork of the clothes as a rejection of the hyperreal look of digital fashion that has swept social media in the last few years. Perhaps in theory at least, the clothes were conceived of as an antidote to an overstimulated, highly technological way of being—the sartorial equivalent of the digital detox we’ve all desperately been craving.In practice, that destroyed look had an apocalyptic bent that verged on the threadbare in places. It would be tough to imagine some of the barely-there devoré-and-silk-chiffon leaf dresses finding a place in the real world. The wrapped and draped herringbone wool coats and crinkled oversized blazers, on the other hand, had a practical swagger that was more tangible. That down-to-earth feeling was in line with the mood of the season and seems most likely to hold sway on the street come fall.
1 March 2023
Negotiating the space around (and between) “menswear” and “womenswear” is nothing new in fashion. What is new, however, is the social context in which that negotiation has been revived. This season JW Anderson, Dolce & Gabbana, and Saint Laurent have all already thrillingly re-engaged in the conversation, this time in front of an emerging generation for which the traditional binary constructs of sex and gender are all up for review, if not already dismissed as hopelessly unfit for purpose.Over at Acne Studios, creative director Jonny Johansson took a typically ironic approach to subverting the biological differences that both define and confine us societally. “I’ve got a lot of masculine baggage,” deadpanned the designer: “so I wanted to explore something that was as masculine as possible.” In fact the collection offered a parodically fabulous version of the traditional in order to lampoon its absurdities, offering wearable ways to get changed.The collection was shot in that ultimate crucible of raw masculinity, a cave. But Johansson’s primitives favored a fresh type of pelt. Oversized strapped and battered jacquard denims (he!) played below woven crop tops (she!) and biker pants motored alongside stretchy tops. There was a pastel soccer shirt worn beneath a bleach splattered ’80s sports blouson. Soccer boots were transformed into heels, worn with a spiraling Aran knit tube dress. “I feel very comfortable with the masculine aesthetic, but not with masculinity itself,” said Johansson. This was an exercise in unconventional comfort designed for those who defy convention.
18 January 2023
The Palais de Tokyo venue was carpeted a light pink, and here and there shell-covered candelabra stood at attention among a maze of beds covered in matching satin duvets and pillows. Kylie Jenner perched on one of the mattresses and the British rapper Little Simz on another. We were all guests at a wedding. Acne Studios’s Johnny Johansson said he’d been thinking about his own nuptials nearly 20 years ago; he’d been having regrets about his outfit, it was too safe.His memories gave the Acne team cause to produce their most dressed up collection since the Swedish brand began showing here in Paris 10 years ago. The denim that forms the company’s foundation was reserved for a strapless all-in-one with a ‘waistband’ neckline and a couple pairs of jeans worn with tulle confections.The ostensible bride wore white embroidered tulle in the shape of an elongated pillow case, the corners creating drama around the shoulders, but Johansson said that he was less interested in the affianced than in the crowd of nearest and dearest that might assemble to celebrate them: the bad brother, the mother who lets the bad brother get away with everything, the tipsy aunt, etc.“Weddings are kind of kitsch,” he pointed out. Surely, the pink satin bed sheet dress qualified. Ditto for the pastel bows trapped between layers of lace and tulle, and the gingham suits with bra tops worn over the jackets, each cup boasting a blooming rosette. All that sweetness met its opposite in thrashed leather blazers trimmed with metal spikes.At weddings, the ceremony often goes on too long and the band is rarely to everyone’s taste. This show was guilty on both counts, but for anyone in need of a friend-of-the-bride dress, the red number with ruching around the heart on its bodice was a knockout.
28 September 2022
By any objective measure at least, Acne Studios is on top. September will see the proudly independent Swedish fashion arthouse mark a decade on the Paris Fashion Week calendar. And it used the pandemic dynamically, making a multi-million euro investment to cook up a fresh retail concept for the grand store that opened with much fanfare earlier this week, at the very same Rue St Honoré space where Jonny Johannson once used to shop for Helmut Lang in the early aughts. Oh yes, and there was this collection too.Johansson dialed into the showroom to describe a typically multi-faceted collection that had sprung, he said, from a very personal place: his wedding. “When we got married I had wanted to wear white. But I chickened out. I ended up wearing a black smoking with a wide lapel that seemed funky, but now, looking back, it probably wasn’t the best choice.” Thinking back on his own nuptials plus those of a few friends who’ve gotten hitched much more recently, Johansson started thinking about occasion wear. This led him to a collection that messed with the archetypes of special-event attire by imagining an Acne-fied cast of characters attending an imaginary wedding.This correspondent’s instinct was that the designer’s own chosen wedding attire—if he could go back and do it all over again—was look 18’s bib shirt and short. On the day though, he would most likely chicken out and go for look 30’s undeniably funking low-hipped pink satin two piece suit. There was a satisfyingly bad boy studded minimal lederhosen-ish leather two-piece perfect for a badly behaved uncle. The woozily wispy distorted crochet knitwear seemed destined for a dangerously boozy auntie. And the linen suiting decorated with almost saccharine sweet bows by artist Karen Kilimnik was a dangerously overt signalling of sweet intentions ideal for any wedding party Romeo to hit the dancefloor in.These fantasy characters aside, you could easily see customers not caring a jot about the inspiration behind the collection but being highly attracted to a suite of clothes that signaled the specialness of the context for which they’d been imagined, but which were also conduits of character and anything but uniform. Top stuff.
25 June 2022
When Jonny Johansson was a teenager still at school he lobbied his mother to get him some Levi’s 501s. Mrs. Johansson resisted, bought Swedish, and came back with two pairs of denim pants that she’d snagged from H&M for the same price as one pair of red tags. “She said this is the best choice,” Johansson sighed backstage tonight. At the same time, however, Mrs. J also picked up a jacket which Jonny initially was not into—but which he decided to have a go at turning into something he liked. “It needed to be shortened and then I added a belt. I went into school wearing it, not knowing if people would notice it, or notice that it was home-made—which was not cool,” he said today. None of Johansson’s schoolmates reacted either way.Well just look at him now. This collection leaned into Acne’s denim heritage in front of an influence-loaded audience with great effect. Upcycled patched denim paperbag skirts, an upcycled patched denim crini dress, and the opening look, averrrywide-leg garment dyed denim skirt, all paid homage to the single medium that was chiefly responsible for this multi-hyphenate success. Against this he played denim’s natural co-conspirator, leather, via a series of double-breasted trench coats reduced to slit-skirted armless dresses, sometimes also overdyed.Other notable elements included tuft-lined and sometimes-quilted regal blanket dresses in grandma florals, crystal embedded rib-kit socks over shoes, grungily faded jersey separates, layered fringed curtain dresses, and repeated returns to the post-Talking Heads boxy blazer in overdyed leather that was another early Acne signature. As tattered and ragged in its delivery as it was complete in its conception, this was an Acne collection that seemed more comfortable with itself than many that I have witnessed since 2010’s Kensington Palace outing—which was delicately referenced here.
2 March 2022
It started with a button. It was shaped like a cartoon flower and marbled like a 1960s Bakelite bangle, and once Jonny Johansson came across the retro fastening in Stockholm, he found he couldn’t stop thinking about it. The button made him both hone in on the hyper-local and come over all crafty for fall. “It’s not like we’ve been on any exotic excursions,” he said wryly, explaining how his obsession became the collection’s starting point. Besides, in normal times, “we’re kind of like nomads, flying around all over the world, all the time. So anything local is kind of gold in my opinion.”Johansson was speaking over the phone from Stockholm, where he was preparing to receive his third vaccine shot. He was unable to present his latest collection in Paris, nor to travel for inspiration. So, he decided to stick with Sweden, particularly with the nomadic communities in the north near where he grew up. A woven woolen bib paired with a figure-skater style metallic blue top recalled the tapestries his mother used to make on a loom in the family sitting room. Boots and slip-on shoes with a distinctive “beaked” toe, part of a collaboration with Kero, a brand native to Swedish Lapland, were based on the ones Johansson wore as a schoolchild. Even the thigh-high chaps—seriously outlandish, and drawing admiring looks in the showroom presentation—were inspired by traditional styles worn by reindeer herders. “I think what has been coming with this whole streetwear explosion is this functionality that we’re quite used to in Scandinavia,” remarked Johansson. “I really didn’t like those boots as a kid, but my mom thought they were cool, and now I realize I quite like them.”Elsewhere, the collection had a grungy, lived-in feel that refused to conform to any singular look. Baggy trousers with appliqué patches were styled with crushed velvet blazers. A brocade patchwork waistcoat was paired with a shearling bolero and loose-fitting fleece trousers in a murky shade of brown. Those floral buttons popped up on a crinkled leather trench coat, the kind that looked like it had been rolled up in a ball under a teenager’s bed for a few months too many. If there was the odd eyebrow-raising item, well, all the better. Acne Studios turns 25 this year, and its perversity has been its strength. “We were wrong from the start,” mused Johansson, when asked to sum up the secret to the brand’s staying power.
“We had the wrong name, we come from the wrong place, we don’t do things as people usually are supposed to do. We are honest about that.”
19 January 2022
From bed clothes to underclothes. That’s the difference half a year of pandemic living can make. The last time Jonny Johansson was showing off his Acne Studios womenswear on the runway, the concept was duvet dressing. This time, with vaccines available to all who’ll take them and a generalized excitement about getting back on the scene, the collection was about undressing, specifically the idea of exposing your lingerie.As a solid Gen X’er, Johansson comes at fashion for the Gen Z shoppers who are the target market these days less by feel than by close observation. “I’m interested in how important it is for them to present themselves,” he said. “Fashion has become almost as important as religion, which is different from when I grew up, when music was the most important religion.” Those of us who fondly remember expressing ourselves via mixtapes can relate. Elaborating, he said he’s noticed a post-lockdown trend toward undone exposure that spans genders. Johansson has teen boys, and they’re just as free and fashion-curious as their female peers.On the runway today, floral-print blouses that fastened with a single bow in the front were paired up with minis bearing straps and buckles that hinted at BDSM or old-fashioned girdles, depending on your references. Corsets got a rework, too, in tooled leather, plaid, or military-grade nylon. And fitted skirts did indeed take their details from girdles, with stretchy side panels and garter snaps—talk about an anachronism. If it wasn’t lifted directly from the boudoir, it was otherwise sheer or clingy or midriff baring—or all three.All this puts Acne in the middle of the fashion conversation for spring 2022, which is right where Johansson wants the brand to be. He also aced the season’s chunky shoe trend with what have to be the most precipitous platforms going. The towering sandals tell the story: They are ridiculous in the way of most fashion shoes, but they aren’t paralyzing the way some runway heels have been this week. To understand sexy in the 2020s versus the sexy of previous, pre-COVID generations, start with the feet.
29 September 2021
Down south in French Basque country, in the village of Guéthary on the Atlantic coast, there is a nonprofit surf hostel meets gallery meets happening space named theMarienia. As Jonny Johansson described it, the place is wonderful—a bit like Tacheles in Berlin, the Chelsea Hotel, or the Rainbow Temple near Byron Bay—in that it attracts souls of an unconventional perspective who find themselves happily washed up there together. As he talked, I half recalled that the Marienia is also frequented byShawn Stüssy“Yes!” Johansson said. “I have met him many times there. And Miki Dora stayed there. And this guy called Ivan [Terestchenko], who made the wonderful bookBeyond Chic. There is this great melting pot of people coming in, going out, and it is a real cultural experience.”As well as shooting this collection at the Marienia, Johansson literally replicated some aspects of it within the garments here; the pattern of a red-buttoned tunic was inspired by bedclothes, and there were flashes of hydrangea to reflect the bursts of color in the garden and an emphasis on burnished brown tones that reflected the paneling of the structure. Less literally, he also worked to recreate that melting-pot vibe by placing hippieish knits and tie-dyes against Lurex-licked suiting against seditiously spirited berets against sexy-boy flares.The styling, less hectically try-hard than at some past Acne shows, nicely played up the creative unorthodoxy Johansson was working to evoke along with his parodically subversive reworking of military vintage. Especially covetable pieces to this eye included a paneling brown suede jacket fringed with black crochet work; a floral-print overdyed shirt in purple with four contrasting patch pockets in blue; some sort of gardener’s jodhpurs worn north of nearly knee-highs; T-shirt-caftan combos with gentle Rabin Huissen prints; and a suit in a croc pattern intended as mock in both senses.There were lots in that melting pot, and overall this was an Acne collection containing much to enjoy staying in. And I’m not just saying that because Johansson opened our conversation by saying this: “When I design collections, it’s a very easy process: I just go for it. I’m scared of getting bad reviews...I’m scared of all of that, but at the same time, I can only do what I do.”
7 July 2021
Jonny Johansson has rather enjoyed lockdown. Spending it at his Swedish country house, he has found it a sort of pastoral escape from reality: “a dreamscape, fantasy situation,” he said. “It’s been quite an easy place to focus, a comforting world to be in.” It’s not been the experience of many over the past 12 months, but it was that envy-inducing sentiment that he chose to translate into his latest Acne Studios collection, which revolves around something likely more relatable to most: duvet dressing.Distressed dressing gowns and fuzzy fabric pajamas, floral nightgowns and distended knits appropriated the cutesy fabrics that furnish his home, making for a collection which, in many ways, you wish debuted this time last year rather than (hopefully) in time for our collective emergence (although “it’s not ending yet,” he cheerily pointed out). But his brand regularly leans into a curated, vintage sensibility, and within the context of his audience’s desires, it maybe makes more sense. Thick knitted socks stuffed into stilettos are already a street style staple, and the new shoes he’d designed, with straps made to accommodate heavy layers, will facilitate its endurance; the artfully askew cuts of chunky cardigans or draped dresses offer inbuilt insouciance. Stripped back, some of the underlayers (notably a tie-dye, silken dress, or a button-down micro-floral ’90s number) were charming. It would have been nice to see some of them appear center stage.Johansson explained he was also designing with the future in mind. His somewhat severe snapback to reality, which appeared toward the end of the collection, revolved around the weddings and funerals precluded by gathering restrictions—hence the monochromatics that followed a palette of well-washed pastels. It felt somewhat dystopian, gaping crochet and wader boots read more directly as apocalyptic than churchgoing attire, but a twisted lace version of a wedding dress or some black taffeta tailoring would certainly suit cocktail hour. This season, designers are grappling with the notion of a post-pandemic wardrobe, and nothing has yet been decided—although it feels unlikely that many people will want to extend a year spent in pajamas much longer than is strictly necessary. But who really knows how any of us will really feel when we finally get there? Maybe the arrival of this collection in stores will prove me wrong.
3 March 2021
Fastening dungaree/salopette suspendersovera tailored jacket was the styling detail that most clearly pointed to Jonny Johansson’s strategy to make a mishmash of menswear categories, spice them up with counterintuitive fabrication decisions, and see what came out in the wash.Elsewhere the same dungarees in a gray chalk stripe were worn with those same straps hanging down beneath a raw-edged leather waistcoat lined in buffalo check wool—a sort of center-of-gravity piece for the collection that united the source material of tailoring, workwear, and rocky stuff with which Johansson was playing. Drop-shoulder oversized suiting was made meta thanks to the patterning of a bootleg Acne Studios logo—slightly “wrong”—that the designer found online and reappropriated. Other creative appropriations included loose shorts inspired by the golfing looks of his parents. A workwear jacket in taffeta, some satin dungarees, and Western jackets in fake fur were examples of the contrast between form and fabrication he was driving at. Crochet prints seemed more akin to paisleys on tie-dyed velvet pants, while the body prints on a black suit were another trippy allusion to the inside-outness of it all.Accessories included an oversized scarf that looked a bit like a bag in a padded jersey and pointy-toe, stacked-heel shoes. In his notes Johansson said: “The global situation this past year has allowed us to look inward, renewing our commitment to an experimental studio practice. Experimentation is what I love in design. It’s like the artist’s studio or the band’s rehearsal room.” His approach to the season led to some beguiling formulations and ended with a suit cut in ripstop printed with denim as a nod to where the Acne journey began.
20 February 2021
If—thanks to the horror movieMidsommar—Sweden now reminds you of creepy cults and boys trapped inside hollowed-out bears (what, rather than “Dancing Queen” and salty licorice?), you may have found a home at Sweden’s own Acne Studios. Well, sort of. While Jonny Johansson didn’t spend the lockdown period on a brightly lit forest farm run by sacrifice-practicing lunatics—but in Stockholm—it did fill him with a sense of spiritual rebirth. “A little bit,” he said. “It feels like a transition to something more positive. I’m very optimistic about what’s happening. I feel positive. I spent more time with myself and my family, and just in the studio with people. It’s been a less stressful period, although the stress has come from somewhere else. I’ve been quite happy, actually, although I know that sounds weird.”Maybe that explained why Johansson’s show notes referenced “gatherings for a spiritual moonrise” (cinemagoers will know what that’s Swedish for), and the garments quite literally reflected it. Everywhere you looked, there was a shiny, metallic, or iridescent texture. Within the context, it felt a bit like New Age spirituality, an element you could associate with the surfer culture Johansson belongs to. “When the sun is going down, hordes of people are staying on the beach looking at the sundown. It’s like a tribe of people that go towards the light,” he said.The shine mingled with raw materials like crinkled paper, washed linens, and hemp on heels. Styled together, it had a certain density about it. A raggy dress in stained leather and tattered netting drove home the cultish association. There may have been a stringy straitjacket in there too. A collaboration with the Los Angeles–based artist Ben Quinn, who interprets his personal experiences with the mystical via supernatural imagery, produced various pieces that made the whole affair feel that extra-bit pagan.Invited to experience a repeat of the show after its livestream, guests walked through a series of rooms in the Grand Palais, each reflecting a different time of day and the light that defines it. The looks were selected to match those different occasions. Models were lined up and walking around in circles, eerily staring up at a massive sunlamp as if they were participating in a séance. In all their textures and intricate cuts, they looked like the street style stars who pose for pictures outside fashion shows. Johansson suggested he was envisioning a wardrobe for the post-pandemic woman.
If what she was searching for was the cult of full-throttle fashion aspiration, she’d have found her guru.
1 October 2020
So the good news is that on the evidence of this highly original Acne menswear collection, clothes design is not a human profession under threat from from AI anytime soon. The schtick was this: Jonny Johansson showed simultaneous fall 2020 women’s and menswear collections in a room beneath the Louvre. Although both collections were in the same space, a big, white wall split the runway so the showings were divided. My esteemed colleague and Louvre expert Amy Verner watched from the women’s side while I watched the men’s.Before the show(s), we did at least get the chance to gang up on Johansson and grill him on what seemed initially a pretentious gimmick as we ate all his backstage fruit. He explained that really, these shows are not the end product of the season, but mid-stage in a process that will see them combined in some project at a later date. The collections had been divided for reasons not entirely clear, but Johansson spoke ominously about a sense of shift on the horizon and an instinct to anticipate it somehow. He said: “We don’t know what’s coming next, we just know that something is coming.”Okay. So each side got a different treatment, and during the show(s) I could catch just a glimpse of the women’s offering via a gently moving mirrored ceiling that sometimes was at the right angle to show the top of the female models. They seemed to be wearing a lot of messed-up long velvet gowns.Over in the men’s half of the room was a collection that had been created in collaboration with a “generative artist” named Robbie Barrat, who writes algorithms to realize his projects. As far as I could tell Johansson had sanctioned the processing of all of Acne’s archives through Barrat’s algorithms to enable an AI-authored menswear collection. There was, I’m sure, plenty of artistic license left here, but running with the idea that this was a tech-authored collection, it was fun to consider whether this was the beginning of fashion Skynet.On the evidence of the first look, especially and much of the first section in general, AI is really, really poor at clothing design—unless its design is to embarrass man to death, in which case it is quite brilliant. The high white-and-tight pants and split-to-the-navel white meshed shirt of that first look were accessorized with a bag that carried as many compelling ideas as this lineup promised to present. With time, however, this collection warmed up a little. Perhaps the shocking start was just a glitch.
There was a great Klein blue puffer jacket and some amusing miniaturized pool-toy accessories. A snake-print suit was not the worst of its kind. There were various distressed-knit tabard-y things of the type digested here before. The collection slowly learned from the lessons of past behavior and became pretty consistent with the Acne aesthetic—not surprising if you consider it was a math-crunched amalgam of all previous Acne Studio collections. This show felt like a conceit that had a tangible foundation but whose execution was considerably flawed. However, I’m certain that an AI Acne Studios–commissioned fashion show review algorithm (or indeed guest influencer) would say something very different.
19 January 2020
You wouldn’t know it from these photos, but the Acne Studios women’s and men’s collections took place together. Meaning, at the same time, in the same venue, with the same music. But instead of being shown together, they had been consciously uncoupled—separated by a featureless white wall running the length of the runway(s).This segregation of guests, who were either invited to one show or the other with no possibility of attending both, was somewhat a tease owing to a massive mirror overtop that regularly tilted back and forth, thus providing a partial, inverted view of what was on the other side while the collections played out. Spotted during one of these glimpses: a shirtless model, a fair amount of space-age white, and my colleague Luke Leitch.There we were, having completely different Acne Studios experiences based on collections that were completely different (Luke’s entertaining, acute review is worth a read). In fact, we learned that this would be the case shortly before when we shared a tête-à-tête with Jonny Johansson, who explained that the tension of simultaneous collections felt more compelling to him than a mixed lineup.“Fashion seems to be in this in-between moment, where it’s referring to history a lot and we’re trying to get to the future,” he said. But if gender fluidity is defining our present, isn’t the wall regressive? “The wall could also be going backwards because we don’t know what’s coming next, but something is coming,” he said.As if hedging his bets—and throwing off any synchronicity between the design teams—Johansson determined that the men’s direction would be forward while the women’s direction would look back (let’s avoid any temptation to read into this). More specifically, AI and algorithms contributed to the men’s designs, whereas Old Masters artworks and ornate, ornamental fabrics formed the basis of the women’s show. Beautiful jacquards, brocades, and velvets that might have otherwise been used for upholstery, theater curtains, or a mondaine’s corset were transformed into dramatic dress coats, cocoon-shaped tunics, and sumptuous suiting with edges frayed and tasseled to varying degrees of decadent distress. Pooling pants trimmed with similar techniques made for an alluring silhouette, especially as a coordinated look, but were essentially glorified dust brushes and a tripping hazard waiting to happen.
A series of twisted tailored looks, including a leather coat painted with a faded scene of classical nudes, reiterated a certain unhinged, arty attitude that comes so naturally to Acne Studios. A body-contoured dress enhanced with a burnout treatment that traced the acanthus pattern was gorgeous in a way that transcended time. The notion of a frame bag took on new meaning with picture-frame pieces affixed as decoration.By the end, one hoped that the lineups might merge, or at least cross sides; and the fact that they didn’t probably had more to do with the incongruity of the collections than faithfulness to an experimental concept. Those on the men’s side would have seen what—and whom—they were missing (Robyn was in our front row). It was interesting to learn from Johansson that the team reworked couture forms to appear “non-modern, like ‘wrong’ fashion.” But as a coda to a week of elaborate men’s collections—and potentially as a precursor to the women’s collections next month—all this wrong looked rather right.
19 January 2020
If explorations of nature have come from all directions over the past few weeks, Acne Studios has now added another—and naturally, it has a Swedish slant. Backstage before the show, Jonny Johansson touched upon various evocative influences—escaping to the archipelagos, writer August Strindberg’s stormy seascape paintings, folkloric textiles from the National Museum—as laying the groundwork for a collection that swerved away from last season’s power-dressing message. “It’s less rigid; [it’s] treasured and loved in some way, and confident in that sense,” he said.Whether intentionally or not, it also played out as some sort of music-festival fever dream. The city aspect so emblematic to the brand became a dystopian countryside, where these characters scavenged and salvaged new wardrobes. Their looks appeared timeworn, homespun, and earthy yet somehow also luxurious: linen pants and coats foiled in gold, suede coats or dresses dotted with raindrop crystals. Layers were their leitmotif; large vests and shabby sweaters were shown over worn-in shirts; dresses and tunic knits shifted open over body-skimming underpinnings. Tactile embellishments sprouted up everywhere: random embroidery strands, charms along back belts, sandal straps loaded with Western buckles. One jacket stood out for its allover cracked effect; in fact, it was a fil coupe overprinted as a trompe l’oeil. Other trippy treatments included shirt pockets that became shadowy outlines, and bucket hats that had been sliced open and laced back together. For all this density of detail—simultaneously intricate and unhinged—these were still the same Acne girls who prefer extra-long sleeves and jeans, who give off that sense of alt-intellectual superiority.The printed pieces featuring Strindberg’s paintings proved the standouts, in part because these wild, poetic scenes embodied the attitude of the collection. You get the sense Johansson found comfort in this pathetic fallacy (when human emotions are attributed to nature) even while ensuring accessible entry points (the bags and scarves, for instance). It had all the ingredients of a good trip.
1 July 2019
Even with my generously supplied,Vogue-arranged credits from Uber it would have been physically impossible to interview Jonny Johansson as per his desired one-one-one (read, slow) basis after this Acne show and make the next one seven kilometers away—until Uber starts running drone-dispatched human deliveries. So instead it was a case of please email the logic of this collection. When that email arrived, it kind of made sense of a mish-mash that included a mix of the attractive (especially the woven, fringed red pieces) and the meh (quite a bit).Acne is an amazing brand that has done a lot, but Johansson should have reconsidered details as basic as his location and presentation. The collection was indulgently shown (read, slow—only Bode was slower). That said, it was deeply thought through, and related to the idea of filtering applied by photographers on their lenses to massage the conditions of light. This was reflected in the transparency of many pieces. The most interesting filters were provided by those garments woven in scarlet with fringing—they were basically quite attractive—but the overall ambition of the collection was not always fulfilled through its execution.
19 June 2019
The staging for the Acne Studios show began as an elevated ledge that followed the curved wall of a gallery within the Palais de Tokyo. Once models reached the end, they descended a few steps to arrive at the main runway. Not all seats had the full view, but the setup was significant as far as supporting Jonny Johansson’s concept this season—essentially, high fashion from the perspective of young people. “All the power dressing that I consider iconic womenswear, maybe they are attracted to it too but in a different way,” he explained backstage. And thus, on high and at a distance, the looks projected sharply defined silhouettes and an attitude to match; up close they revealed subversions that were destabilizing yet persuasive.Seemingly oversize pants took on new form when cinched at the waist and tucked into slouch socks; equally standout were the coats that remained beautifully rounded in the shoulders and sleeves while boasting buttons down the back. A sophisticated damask in bright colors became as bold a statement as any streetwear signaling. Experiments in draping, smocking, and ruching dialed up the sex appeal of certain dresses in a way that felt unfamiliar to Acne Studios but was certainly not unwelcome.Carry this thought through to the rectangle bras and hand-draped nylon stockings—their very visibility, whether under a leather jacket or from the slit of a dress, would determine those who would identify with a look versus others who might feel intimidated by it. But Johansson suggested he’s no longer courting youth, simply curious to occupy their headspace. “I think I’ve changed, and now I’m more interested in the academic side, like what time does to fashion.” As in? A Helmut Newton photograph, he replied, where a detail as seemingly minor as a pair of pumps has the capacity to register as relevant all over again, or maybe even for the first time, depending on perspective. Pumps, needless to say, were added to this collection—and amidst the irregularly shaped trussed boots, they held the power.
20 January 2019
When it comes to his part in the fashion playground, Jonny Johansson said this afternoon that he always feels like a double outsider: “Because we’re from Stockholm, which is from way outside [the fashion world], plus I’m from the very north of Sweden, which is way outside even Stockholm.” For this Acne Studios collection, Johansson harnessed the advantage that provenance from the periphery affords: fresh perspective.Here, he worked to mash together many disparate elements into a newly coalesced menswear proposition. Farming has been a pretty rare reference at the shows, but it was present today in tractor-soled, half-length rubber work boots reimagined in leather; a flecked pale work jacket with a strapped satin utility pouch; and cow-print trenchcoats. He touched on late-mid-century bohemia and counterculture in the psychedelic swirl vests; superlong snoods with even longer fringing; and the colored snake-effect trenches, shirt-jackets, and moto pants. Shirts worn above high-waisted leather pants with carpenter’s pockets were semi-sheer and patterned with distressed chevrons in Lurex that Johansson had drawn from vintage soccer jerseys; these sometimes resembled Arsenal’s immortal “bruised banana” stripe of the 1990s.There was stretch suiting in textured jersey, some nice long coats in soft velvet in hard colors (the pale, pale pistachio looked especially strong), fitted pants and tightly darted shorts in top-to-toe finely lined brown with lavender topstitching, and super-oversize work shirting. Pants featured vibrantly lined pockets that could be worn open on the hip, as they were in this show, but were also built to function when fastened at one side by hook and eye to the waistband. Accessories included rugged fanny packs and necklaces hanging with hollowed silver globes, partially sliced, whose insides were colored to complement the garments they were worn with. Whatever he says, Johansson these days is as inside as it gets in fashion; that outsider eye, however, remains.
16 January 2019
Long is the list of fashion designers who have created costumes for dance or theatrical performances. When a choreographer friend in Stockholm approached Jonny Johansson with a similar proposal, the Acne Studios cofounder and creative director recalled that he contemplated the idea before ultimately declining. How come? “First of all, I just know fashion; and second, I didn’t want to ruin his show.” Whatever the reasons, his research wasn’t for naught, as it turns out that the dancer-as-muse proved a dynamic fit for the Acne Studios aesthetic.Even without knowing that the brand’s Instagram had been taken over by Alice Renavand, a principal dancer from the Paris Opera Ballet, the influence was clear from the start: sheer and stretchy materials as a base for fluid layers or fitted leather bodices; bodysuits visible under jackets; and shoes that hybridized the familiar Acne babouches with a ballet slipper. All that graceful balletic vernacular was constantly exposed to a contemporary edit—and vice versa. See the scooped neckline of a top trimmed in macramé lace that had a whiff of Dégas’sPetite Danseuse, or the red leather bootleg pants that appearedtrèsAcne from the front while yielding ribbed leggings down the back. Things turned especially modern and meta through the placement of decades-old Merce Cunningham posters and dancer photos reduced to patches and placed onto ample outerwear or a linen jumpsuit as though fragmented scrapbooks. And of course, it was impossible to miss the many signs ofSwan Lake, whether as a swirling jacquard of swans or the birds as large crystal and paillette embroideries. A retro New York City Ballet T-shirt embellished with a pretty knit neckline felt emblematic of the entire inspirational exercise—something that a dancer takes from her closet and gives her own creative twist. The accessories—bandana bags, chain accessories loaded with charms, and futuristic sneaker sandals—seemed appropriated from her everyday look, dialed up with desirable edge.Postshow, Johansson said he envisioned the lineup as four acts: rehearsal, onstage, off-duty, and evening. This last grouping consisted of elegant, allover looks featuring the Palais Garnier plus old stage illustrations as an architectural spin on toile de Jouy. They, along with the tuxedo and black dress, bode well for what he mentioned as an interest to push the formal register going forward.
By now, it should be pretty obvious that this was a diverse collection with excellent, inclusive styling; unlike the usual ballet tropes, there was no expectation of being 16 and a size zero. For every gal who falls for the furry black swan slippers, there will be an Isabelle Huppert–type woman (the estimable actress was seated next to this reviewer), already singling out certain sophisticated looks that would be worthy of any stage.
1 July 2018
As I walked into this show, Bryan Grey Yambao (aka Bryanboy) gave me the up-and-down and observed, “I had no idea that men over 40 evenworeshorts.” Meow, Bry,meow! Even for those not blessed with the best legs in the influencer game, this was most definitely a show to be bare-legged in: It ran super-late and got as hot as Hades.Once it was under way, though, this new-to-runway outing for Acne Studios was gently experimental and occasionally excellent. As Jonny Johansson had explained preshow, “It’s an experiment with the definition of garments. We were looking at the archetypal constructions of one garment and applying them to another . . . I think a lot of shows are driven by categories, but if the perception of them is played with, you can make something interesting.”This translated into an opening blouson with inverted jean pockets and a jean waistband worn above fine-cotton pants with a subtle kick, as well as what looked like a trenchcoat with a purple polo shirt collar, and a field jacket elongated into a piece of full-length outerwear (great in orange). There was some good soft suiting in linen that came in that violent orange and a tantamount-to-luminous green; an interesting loose trouser tied at the right hip; plus an overcoat in a woven greenish yellow fabric that sported old-school curtain fringing at the hem: soft furnishing for him. Bags mixed webbing and nylon with what looked like a print, but Johansson said that the image of a lake in Sweden was in fact woven: an organic rendering of a digital image of a natural scene. There were also some excellent shorts.Afterward, Johansson, also over 40 and in shorts, took his bow to deserved applause. And, no, Bryan, I will not be going Prada short-short anytime this season. There are limits, and they start just above the knee.
20 June 2018
Of all the designers moving from regular Fashion Week to the haute couture, the switch by Acne Studios to show its women’s collection might be the most convincing and believable. That’s not intended as criticism of the others who’ve decamped to this slot on the fashion calendar, and it’s certainly not because Acne’s Jonny Johansson fancies himself ready to take on the daunting, double-trouble challenge ofle tailleurandle flou, the twin pillars of the couture. As he put it in a pre-show backstage chat, “We’re not trying to get the limelight of the couture, or to disturb it in any way.” Johansson explained further: “It’s quite a bold decision from a business perspective, but from a life perspective, it’s an important choice. I love fashion, but I can’t keep up with these long, long, long seasons. We’ve gone backwards; now we do one collection that contains a wardrobe, that we always do obviously, with some spice, and that’s it.” So now he shows his men’s in Paris as usual, and his women’s a matter of days, rather than many weeks, later.If that sense of life choice explicitly influenced his decision, a lifting of the eyes away from the grindstone for just a minute to think about ways to deal with the industry’s ceaseless desire to always be showing you’re doing something,anything, then the sense of re-prioritizing also factored into the collection itself. Johansson has watched as friends and colleagues have chosen to move away from urban environments to live in the countryside. “And they come back looking amazing, great skin, relaxed,” he said, laughing. It’s a zeitgeist-y, don’t-we-all-feel-it-right-now yearning that he’s caught here, much in the same way as Acne’s recent ad campaign starring Atlanta couple Kordale Lewis and Kaleb Anthony with their ridiculously adorable kids celebrated what family means in the 21st century.This then was the Swedish label’s ode to the rural idyll, to reconnecting to a quieter, less incessant rhythm of life, and what resulted felt romantic, comforting, and rich in spirit, and with a cool whiff of the early ’90s; not grunge, but more the downbeat beauty of Corinne Day shooting Cecilia Chancellor in a field. Wind-beating, weathered trenchcoats snapped over crumpled silken polka-dot print trousers or cuffed leather crop pants.
There were terrific bias-cut, pintucked, floral-sprigged dresses that looked like they’d been left out to dry in the wind and the sun, some partnered with metallic and ever-so-slightly kitschy floral shirts, haphazardly buttoned to trail from the shoulders. And there were plenty of the great coats that Acne Studios has proven itself to be so adept at these past few seasons, too; the label is based in light- and heat-challenged Sweden, so practice has clearly made perfect here. Next Fall’s standouts: the floor-length fake fur and wool-paneled looks, or a leaf-strewn print on an oversize blanket-wool piece tied at the waist with an oversize shoestring. Do try this styling trick at home. Or in the country. You know, either will work.
24 January 2018
To see fashion through a child’s eyes Jonny Johansson recruited a team of children to sketch this collection. Backstage after his crowded show-presentation hybrid, he explained that a group of school kids up to 14-years-old had delivered some drawings of clothes, whose naivety he had worked to integrate into the real ones. “It was a quest for pure creativity,” he said.The work of these young brand consultants was evidently reflected in a 2-D felted gray V-neck T-shirt and in an opening sweater in a felted red on green wool whose elongated arms looked beguilingly both innocent and impractical. The same goes for the rustically applied woolen stars and rockets placed upon the chests of some fine-gauge knit sweaters. Oversize pants in an attractive abstract jacquard had a distinctive double pintuck crease on the outside of each leg, by coincidence a detail also seen at Ermenegildo Zegna this season. There were a few particularly lovely pieces, including some diamond-knit sweaters in mustard or bordeaux overlaid with startling wavy lines of pink and blue, respectively, and a pared-down duffle coat in blue whose shoulder patch was that same many-yarned jacquard. The duffle was both distinctive and fresh. Golden threads, some chewed pensively by models backstage, acted as jewelry. The presentation was a little flawed, but the collection was highly enjoyable.
19 January 2018
The runway at Acne Studios was shrouded with an enormous translucent shower curtain this afternoon. And as models hit the catwalk dressed in sugary pastel colors, the effect was something like looking inside a frosted jar of sherbet candy. That through a glass darkly conceit was merely temporary, though, and it wasn’t long before the plastic drapes were lifted on the brand’s Spring 2018 collection.According to creative director Jonny Johansson, the show’s dramatic opener was a way to replicate the vantage point of an outsider. “I’ve always felt that I’ve been a bit apart from the system, and really, the collection was about exploring that idea,” he said backstage. Johansson summed up the inspiration in less conceptual terms as “thrift shop on acid.” There’s been a resurgence in secondhand nostalgia, and Acne’s version of it had a ’70s groove.Saturday Night Feversuiting abounded, with sexy satin blouses covered with a python print or tinged with zingy shades of lime and mint green. Traditional pinstripes were also given the disco treatment, with fine strands of metal fringing swinging along the lines of tailored trousers and pants. It was a nice way to whisk 9-to-5 dressing off into the night.There were beach references that surfaced at the party as well. Johansson was inspired by the surfers of Biarritz, where he often vacations—hence, the shiny Hawaiian shirts and mesh polo tops. Like many designers right now, he’s been rethinking the notion of customization. Washed, over-dyed, then hand embroidered with thousands of sequins, the glittering jean shirt that was paired with a fringed crochet dress came with lots of glamour and personality. It also brought Johansson’s mission statement for the brand full circle, back to more humble beginnings: denim.
30 September 2017
Was this the wrong door? As you walked into Acne Studios today you found yourself backstage. Nobody ushered you out, but just encouraged you down past the emptied rails and hanging look boards. There was the sound of applause beyond the stage wall. Wait, was this even a show—had it started?“One, two, three, go!” said the headset-guy to the guest in front of you. Ahh! We were the models. Once past his counted prompt you turned a corner onto a raised catwalk with a line of Paris’s osteopathic tragedy circus chairs alongside, on which sat the models wearing Jonny Johansson’s Acne Studios collection. We watched them and they watched us, occasionally rising to applaud when the music faded out.To be truly authentic, it was put to Johansson, the models should not have applauded us but instead taken desultory pictures on their phones and looked around for the door. “Ah! You’ve stolen the setup for the next season!” he replied.The collection on the models was, he said, based on the idea of transitioning from a sweaty city to the Swedish summerhouse—the clapboard family-owned structures dotted around that country’s gorgeous archipelago of islets and islands. “I wanted a general mood of sensitivity, something romantic,” he added: “These are times that everybody is dressed in hoods—urban apocalyptic, likeMad Max—but for me it was important to show something beautiful, inspiring maybe, without being pretentious.”Johansson’s signature oversize summer outerwear was cut in chiffon or linen in pale blue and deep red—shades named in Swedishfalurodanddalablarespectively, the release said—and accompanied by matching superwide pants you couldn’t really see the drape of because the models were seated. Crochet tank tops and some narrower-cut outerwear and suiting came with naive stitching details derived, Johansson said, from typical mumsy Swedish cushions. The slingback sandals and slippers were especially nice, in fish scale–print leather or stiff fine-mesh crochet. As Johansson finished riffing on his summerhouse fantasy the models rose again and applauded: overkill, guys.
24 June 2017
After years of presenting its pre-collections in New York, and then in Paris, Acne Studios extended an invitation to Stockholm, where it is based. If the decision simplified things logistically, it also provided an easy narrative; for all the brands bringing editors to different corners of the globe, the directional Swedish label brought this reviewer to its home. Located in a former bank on the edge of Stockholm’s Old Town, the headquarters houses roughly 200 people covering just about every department—fabric research, retail development, marketing, quality control, and, yes, actual studios—in such condensed quarters that a company-wide move to a spacious Brutalist building will take place by the end of the year. But brand director Pontus Björkman (aka Employee No. 1) seemed proud to provide a full tour of the current building, insisting there was no internal memo to tidy up ahead of the visit. “I wanted you to see the mess; hopefully by next season, you’ll see something else,” he said at some point between introducing the IT and online support teams.All this build-up—both literal and figurative—gave way to a big reveal that included both the collection, minimally staged in a tidy showroom, and the choice of lookbook model: the legendary Veruschka von Lehndorff, who immediately signaled ageless swagger in boxy jackets, hoodies, patterned leggings, and eye-catching suede gloves (half opera, half safety). As creative director Jonny Johansson tells it, the septuagenarian was familiar with the brand and eager to style the looks herself. “The creative process was dynamic and easy; she was almost taking over,” he explained. “And this is what we want, this is what’s real.” Mining the brand’s distinctive realness, he added, motivated this season’s juxtaposition of utilitarian and artisanal references. “I wanted to explore why we are different and what we’re communicating. The idea of us versus the reality—I wanted to show we were not just one thing like normcore. I thought it would be nice to show cool, strong women.” As opposed, presumably, to Bobby Gillespie, who modeled some of the women’s looks last pre-collection. While basic is relative within the Acne Studios realm—ample, high-waist chinos and a fine-gauge cable-knit sweater might apply–the lineup leaned unwaveringly toward wearable.
Still, nothing was standard; not the poplin shirts and pants accented with folk embroidery, not the hand-distressed vintage leather, and certainly not the floor-grazing vest in mossy suede. Several pieces featured a new stamped logo—most noticeable on the canvas bag behind a leather lattice—but the painted wood belt buckle and shell accessories make for more interesting identifiers. Likewise, the swimsuit fabric layering, which Von Lehndorff clearly embraced, whether worn with rock star boots or nonchalant slides. You can either take a direct cue from her styling for an androgynous icon look, or reshuffle according to your individual taste. The takeaway, in all respects, is to make it personal.
6 June 2017
Where designers in New York were grappling with the current political climate, many in Paris have been yearning for more innocent times, including Acne Studios creative director Jonny Johansson. His artistic reference point this season was especially telling; he was inspired by the finger puppets that Paul Klee, the renowned Swiss-German artist, made for his son back in the mid-1910s and 1920s. He’s not the first to draw on a homespun naïveté. In fact, a more hand-hewn and imperfect idea of femininity has been percolating in fashion for the last few seasons.At Acne Studios, it played out with long deconstructed linen dresses in earth tones that were cut along a skewed asymmetric line. That intentional off-kilter aesthetic came off a little derivative at times, though it had a fresher feeling when it was spliced with more optimistic floral prints. Johansson has always enjoyed experimenting with proportions, often testing the limits of the body with blown-up, extra-big silhouettes. He toyed with the conventions of tailoring this time around, another big theme of the season, and pinstriped blazers were turned back-to-front and extended to the floor. It was the more whimsical takes on executive realness, however, that hit the mark here, including a cropped floral jacket that was layered over crinkly pants, and a tunic in a matching fabric. The designer tends to have big ideas in the accessories department as well, and the irregular hoop earrings, which were made from clay and came dangling with charms, were a nice update on the brutalist jewelry trend and had a cool gallery-girl vibe to them.Though Acne Studios often looks to the rarefied world of art for direction, the roots of the brand are in the street and started with denim. The closest thing to jeans on the runway today, however, was a pair of indigo blue and white striped pants. Now that the high fashion hoodie has reached saturation point, the move towards a more grown-up aesthetic is surely a sign of the times, one that is also resonating with formerly denim-centric brands such as Off-White and Marques' Almeida. Taken apart, there were pieces that had an uncomplicated, playful appeal—geometric tinted sunglasses and cozy sweaters with polka dots that were streaming with thread—just the kind of cheery pick-me-ups we can all use in dark times.
4 March 2017
Jonny Johansson is the winner of this menswear’s Finest Inspiration award. Why? Because the oversize silhouettes at this morning’s Acne Studios presentation were, he said, inspired by “Keanu Reeves’s swollen face.” Don’t fret, Keanu; Johansson meant that in a good way—swollen with beauty in your youthful pomp. This was just one delight in a presentation fairly brimming with them. While we sat in the lecture hall of a beautiful old medical school, a French professor ran through a slideshow of self-portraits in art history, from Rembrandt to Otto Dix to Kafka—and occasionally made provocative assertions about the selfie generation in an accent so melted gruyère it was impossible to entirely discern.Johansson, who was situated at the back of the class, said he’d been thinking about business tropes of ’80s menswear and the masculine urge to fetishize detail—so geekiness basically. The result was a collection walked by its models onto a tiled table that was presumably once used as a slab for cadavers under study by aspiring French doctors. It consisted of some almost parodic ensembles of ’80s formal tribes subjected to the swollen-Keanu treatment. The first look was a gray pinstripe peak lapelled jacket ballooned by the neoprene within, to excessive proportions, worn over incongruously skinny pants and wedge sneakers whose pastel paneling complemented the teal body of the white collared shirt above. A pink cashmere sweater under a mint high-necked fine gauge knit above some wide but tapering blue pants, held fast by a felted belt-suspender combo, looked very back-then Giorgio Armani. The embroidered hounds on a pale green knitted zipped shirt with an oversize collar were an Acne Studios-fied take on Brooks Brothers prep. And the swollen camel coat over another camel coat and camel zip-up looked like a loving but irreverent re-rendering of Max Mara, perhaps the greatest brand in all of fashion that should make menswear and doesn’t.There is no belittling meant in mentioning these other designers, by the way: Johansson was riffing on a decade whose style they were fundamental in shaping; seeing them here so clearly just meant he was getting it right.
21 January 2017
The photos might have given initial cause for confusion: HasAcne Studiosopted to combine its men’s and women’s collections as other brands are doing? Or is the male model wearing the women’s pre-collection? Wait, is that Bobby Gillespie?Indeed, the Swedish label featured the 54-year-old post-punk singer (also recognized among fashion people as the husband of super-stylist Katy England) in half of its Pre-Fall looks (model Angelica Erthal took on the rest). This wasn’t, however, a gimmicky exercise in wardrobe sharing—even though he happens to look marvelously debauched and debonair in the double-breasted velvet jacket and slim trousers. This is what results when Acne Studios’s Jonny Johansson thinks subversively about wearable clothes, subsequently inviting the artist to play an interpretation of himself. “As I was finalizing this collection, I realized I had designed a look for Bobby Gillespie,” explained Johansson in a statement, as he was unable to make the trip this time. And Gillespie doesn’t just wear the clothes—he assumes them with sardonic verve. In a draped azure satin evening dress inspired by a barbershop cape, he conjures up a disenchanted gospel singer.But just because these ’70s pieces with their charismatic accents were designed with Gillespie in mind doesn’t distract from their intention for the rest of us. Johansson is a big believer in an elongated silhouette for Pre-Fall—obvious as a leather trench or unexpected as a vintage-inspired print dress over a caftan. It’s a persuasive look. Fans of the brand’s denim should prepare to add the pair embroidered with flowers and bees to their closets. Come to think of it, the real stars of this collection were all of the pooling corduroy pants.
18 January 2017
Acne Studioscreative director Jonny Johansson isn't one for political fashion statements, preferring to make clothes that reflect experiences in his inner world. Given the current state of global events, however, it's almost impossible not to feel personally affected. The refugee crisis continues to dominate the conversation in Europe, and prompted Johansson to look for inspiration outside the borders of his native Sweden, toward the rich textile traditions of the countries where many have been displaced. The distinctive geometric motifs commonly found in Arabic nations, including Syria, were woven throughout the collection, with hefty sweater dresses that looked like they might have been cut from hand-knotted byzantine rugs, and kaftans that appeared like a patchwork of the scarves worn by nomadic tribes in the Sahara.The oversize shapes and workwear silhouettes Johansson used to play out his references were far closer to the brand’s roots; a wise move on his part. In fact, it felt like the baggy dungarees and cropped denim pants embroidered with tonal paisley motifs were a return to the brand's core tenets: Lest we forget that the label used to have the word jeans in its name.Johansson enjoys experimenting with extreme proportions, and the robe coats and jackets that were finished with utilitarian trimmings struck the right chord. The extensive selection of extra-thick, supersize sweaters and jumpers didn’t quite hit the mark, though, and would be tough to pull off for non-models. Those pieces tended to weigh down the offering, along with the sculptural wooden heels. Still, accessory magpies won’t be disappointed with the embellished lace-up slippers and the great paisley-printed shoulder bags. Jane Birkin, who sat front row next to New York rapper Mykki Blanco and French musician Soko, was pretty impressed; she was among the first to congratulate Johansson on the show. If her track record with accessories is anything to go by, then Acne Studios could be on to a winner.
1 October 2016
Jonny Johansson, creative director ofAcne, masterminded a strange and interesting game of musical chairs in the romantically ravaged interior of the Lycée Charlemagne. Every 60 seconds or so, the PA would stop pumping and his models would get up and pull their metal-legged chairs here and there across the floor before sitting down again once the tunes resumed. At first sight they appeared to be wearing tents, or at least something tentatively tent-ish of aspect, and that proved to be the case. Said Johansson: “It’s very simple. It’s about the emptiness of the Swedish summer . . . I think it’s quite romantic in a way. I wanted to have romance in a show but without the regular runway thing.”We walked down the hall between them, adjusting conversational volume in sync with the DJ, as Johansson delivered an exegesis of the huge A-line ponchos that were the defining garment of the collection. “They are inspired by tents, old-fashioned tents,” he said. The silver eyelets pressed in at the top of the spine were peg-ready, and the variously laminated, plasticized and bonded fabrics sometimes had the realistic look and feel of well-used tarp. Others were shiny and came in shirting stripes. They flared out widely from the body, tentlike, of course, with particular volume at the back. Completing the campsite capsule was a selection of shoes that ran from coated Chelsea boots to surf booties to rubberized Mary Janes. Zip-away techno jersey pants and shorts in plain color provided cover. Vests and tops in tablecloth checks and stringy bouclé, plus woven hemp shirts and tees (with matching shorts) in a neutral wheaty tone delivered texture. One especially striking knitted vest came with hand-painted flecks of green and orange fluoro, which competed winningly with the oaty texture of the yarn. Nostalgic, avant-garde, and Swedish, this was Acne all over.
25 June 2016
Thanks to three days of unrelenting rain in Paris, the color-bleeding and -dyeing techniques that appeared on various pieces of theAcne StudiosResort collection seemed uncannily apropos, as if a slip dress, slouchy utilitarian ensemble, and deconstructed tank had been subjected to the elements leading up to the presentation. But a tête-à-tête with creative director Jonny Johansson revealed the real sequence of events: that his increasing devotion to surfing led to an interest in the Grateful Dead and, in turn, the concept of how the daughter of a Deadhead might interpret the subculture’s idiosyncratic look. Freely admitting he didn’t listen to the band during its golden age, Johansson clarified how the next-gen narrative allowed him to keep the collection in, shall we say, the hear and now. While an onstage attitude often registered in the styling—amping up a black side-belted, draped dress with plongé “harness” gloves, aka supple leather arm stockings—the general vibe aligned with Johansson’s pursuit of fluidity and softened volumes. Whereas one jacket was puffed up with a crinoline underpinning, another was opened up, barely held together with hook-and-eye closures. The crinolines appeared elsewhere, their exposed layers of cotton and linen like a rebellious attempt at historical femininity. Skin, by contrast, was rarely exposed, more often hidden behind a flattened duvet dress, bunched motocross pants, or rearranged asymmetric layers.Johansson noted how all the hand-bleaching, oil-printing, and tie-dyeing returned the studio to its DIY beginnings. But in the spirit of keeping things contemporary, the effects were rendered extra trippy by way of digital scanning. “That’s what makes things interesting for us—we’re not going back,” said Johansson. By the time the 19 models had assumed a seated mise-en-scène within the Musée des Beaux-Arts, it was clear that Acne Studios was making a concerted effort not to be basic. Those who find the key pieces too specific—too psychedelic, too youthful—can still feed their brand fandom with clog sandals; a new bag with interchangeable straps; and the Deadhead-inspired jewelry, which includes skull drop earrings in semiprecious stone skulls and finger and toe rings in glossy enamel.
1 June 2016
An ’80s vibe has been reverberating on the runways in Europe this season, and the punk soundtrack atAcne Studiosthis afternoon was plugged into that vibe. Creative director Jonny Johansson has been a fan of Californian punk outfit the Cramps since his teenage years, and backstage after the show he admitted to fanning out when he met the band’s guitarist in New York. “The Cramps never really had hit songs, but they had a lot of attitude,” he said. “It was provocative, aggressive, and I wanted to bring that mood to what we do.” You need only browse the many performance videos on YouTube to get a sense for the band’s style and bravado. Known as Poison Ivy and Lux Interior, the two most striking members of the crew shared a fearless gender-fluid aesthetic, in which a casual look for a woman or man might encompass a pair of PVC panties, sky-high stilettos, and not much else.Johansson was among the first designers to jump on the pant-less trend, and this season he continued the theme with some novel takes on underwear as outerwear: PVC leotards and undies that were worn over stockings or skintight pants. The brand is never afraid to subvert traditional proportions, and the sinewy punk rocker silhouette was blown up big with XXL pants in heavy mohair and PVC. Those audacious experiments in form seemed to weigh down the collection in places, along with oversize woolen jumpsuits. The tailored holographic pants made for a better line, as did off-the-shoulder jackets. Outerwear is arguably Acne Studios’s strong suit, and their interpretation of the quilted coat was a nice addition to the ones we’ve seen coming through for Fall, even if the somewhat curious styling obscured some of the standouts. One orange coat in particular had a body-skimming fit that trumped the puffer’s shapeless associations.Acne Studios has a pretty strong track record for making compelling footwear, too, and though the baggy over-the-knee boots were in step with fashion’s current endless-leg obsession, they fell flat on desirability. In fact, it feels as if the Swedish brand has recently lost some ground in the streetwear territory they once laid claim to, ceding it to a new wave of rebellious streetwise designers. That said, they did find their footing with their bags for Fall, and the leather-lined bungee cord shoppers were a cool bit of arm candy that are likely to be a hit in all shapes and sizes.
5 March 2016
Militaria hackneyed? Not atAcne. After spotting pieces of Swedish army surplus on the streets, Jonny Johansson looked back to the nine months he spent in military service as a youth. “Mostly I was freezing my arse off,” he said, “sleeping under snow in the forest.” While serving his country, Johansson was issued a uniform that dated from the 1940s. To this baseline influence was mixed pink, lavender, a graphic ribbon squiggle, and some decorative eyelet detailing that were all drawn from Västerbottensdräkten, the folk costume particular to the canton of Swedish Lapland in which the designer spent a decade of his childhood.High-waisted, double-pleated tapered pants—quite formal—or patch-pocketed army pants were worn under reduced greatcoats, fitted micro peacoats, and maxi donkey jackets. A snap-front lavender suede shirt was layered beneath a padded gilet and above a long-skirted shirt in what looked like olive flannel or felt. A number of the shoes were most definitely felt—great fun, grafted loafer–sock hybrids. There was a bit of gray tailoring in nano-herringbone with distressed detail at its seams. Some of the color detail was lovely—if camouflage only at an extroverts’convention—like the teal leather pants that tanged against orange mohair socks.
23 January 2016
Jonny Johansson has not achieved such consistent success withAcne Studiosby turning out ordinary clothes season after season. Motivated by cultural constructs, social anthropology, and the way people present themselves in the world, he often mentions researching an idea in depth before arriving at the first designs. From a time-warped youth recreation center in Paris, where a herringbone floor and peeling turquoise paint accented an indoor basketball court, he explained his fascination with teens who break off into cliques and mirror each other in how they dress. From there, he introduced five groups of four girls; they represented slick academics, alt artists, neo-grunge musicians. Not your average schoolyard gals, they seemed exceedingly unapproachable; yet this setup permitted Johansson to hedge a handful of nonconformist themes without overcommitting to one.In general, the collection favored elongated narrow silhouettes, expressive graphic color, and a revisionist spin on such grunge staples as the slip dress (especially in crushed velvet). A closer scan revealed how fabrics and shapes had been studied and developed: tailoring with subtle bouclé pinstripes, beading discreetly embedded alongside fringed embroidery, track pants in leather bonded to jersey, and pointed boot-pant hybrids extending to the mid-thigh. Sandals worn with heavy socks proved cool enough to be adopted by each group. But the queen bee piece was a fuzzy yellow plaid coat overpainted with a black-and-white grid, like an absurdist clash of Cher Horowitz and Mondrian.Despite its experimentation, the collection held a strong point of view. Once it reaches stores, women will buy into individual items—the shearling coat or padded pylon orange denim jacket—because they want dynamic outerwear, not because they identify with a clique. Unless of course, the clique is Acne Studios itself.
11 January 2016
A bohemian circle of muses have been in heavy rotation for the last couple of seasons—Joni Mitchell, Janis Joplin, and the like—but now it seems that things in fashion might be moving to a new musical beat.Acne Studios’ creative directorJonny Johanssonis certainly keen on pressing the fast-forward button, and his latest collection vibrated with an energy that fell somewhere between ’80s electro and ’90s rave culture. Electric guitars made of chrome and plexiglass, which embellished the length of cropped trousers and boxy suiting, were the most obvious leitmotifs here. More convincing, though, were the eye-catching optical polka-dot prints that resembled the dilated pupils of euphoric ravers, on floor-length velvet and silk dresses that were fastened in the back with guitar-like straps—a cool take on the slip dressing trend.If one were to peg the collection to a stylish musical icon in particular, it would likely be Grace Jones. The radical 67-year-old Jamaican singerjust published her memoirs, and has been inspiring a new generation of fans with her risk-taking sorry-not-sorry sense of style. Jones recently caused a stir at the Afropunk Festival in New York wearing one of her many elaborate costumes (it involved little more than a corset G-string body suit, and a Hula-Hoop that she kept spinning around her lithe torso). The blazers-cum-minidresses that Johansson paired with short-as-you-dare hot pants and statement asymmetric shades were a look that Jones could pull off to this day, though it’s doubtful who else could, besides superstar bad gals like Rihanna perhaps, who has been making headlines with her pantless ensembles all summer long.In some ways it felt as if part of the grounding street smart vibrations that first propelled Acne into the spotlight were lacking today; the cut and fit of their original oversized biker jackets and shearling coat is still hard to beat, after all. Still, warm-weather dressing isn't something that Nordic fashion folk have much time to experiment with. The discharge-print boy racer tees and charming checkerboard slip-on Moroccan slippers, on the other hand, are likely to be a hit with the first bloom of spring.
3 October 2015
Jonny Johansson indulged his personal passions as he went about gestating this Acne collection. It started with his growing yen for surfing, an intoxication stirred on the wind-raised waves near his summer house, which formerly belonged to Ingmar Bergman. Through surfing, he came across Robin Kegel, a Californian-born, Biarritz-based surfer who cuts his own hair and shapes his own boards. Kegel's longboard decals provided the prints that flickered in and out of this show, while the rest of it—especially the platforms—arrived via Johansson's guitar playing and his fondness for the New York Dolls. The only thing preventing the connection between Kegel and the Dolls feeling utterly arbitrary was Johansson's keenness on both. Kegel's hairstyle, all blunt-scissored terraces of copper, worked well on the models' wigs. The colors—pistachio, pink, and yellow—were an adroit mix of surf and pre-punk. With its Johnny Thunders platforms, ribbed cashmere dresses, and romper suits, the collection tapped into menswear's current fixation with gender fluidity—especially when teamed with the brand's as-yet-unchristened man bag.
27 June 2015
From a cavernous gallery near the Bastille, Jonny Johansson explained how, as Acne Studios matures as a brand, the clothes need not necessarily chart the same course. Which is to say, he doesn't want to lose the naïveté. He then pointed to works by cubist Albert Gleizes and postmodern artist Mario Schifano—both found in the aspirational Rizzoli tome on Marella Agnelli—as fundamental to the Resort collection's expressive attitude.By the time the first model emerged from a mixed-media installation (a cross between kindergarten and Arte Povera), her bonded linen and poplin trench, accented with a stiff, stand-away storm flap and pockets, seemed far more sophisticated than Johansson's lead-up. And because he holds such high regard for fabric and fabrication, the collection largely stayed that way, whether it was the effortlessly tailored robe coat in contrasting wallpaper stripes or the knotted paperweight suede skirt. Even the collaged viscose shapes patched onto an organza base required precise craftsmanship; of the orange strip running across both trouser legs, Johansson noted dryly, "It was easier to sketch than produce."But if the rusty red leather coat was unapologetically grown-up, the collection elevated certain nostalgic '90s throwbacks—those stretchy tattoo chokers now in metal, tear-away shorts in leather—to play up the fun. Add in the eccentric touches—the frayed fabric monk shoes, the fabric-blocked smock tops, and the spray-paint-effect stenciling atop floral printed silk—and you ended up with a collection well matched for art-fair-hopping. Someone might even comment that the hot pink lining peeking out from a slashed striped dress calls to mind Arte Povera's Lucio Fontana.
18 June 2015
Acne held its show at the Pompidou Centre. The crowd on the outside of the windows was as many rows deep as the bleachers set up inside the famous museum. What could they have made of this collection with its sturdy tweed coats, their extreme volumes wrestled under control by thick rope lacing, and its sheer, breast-baring knits? Acne is a brand they're likely familiar with. There are three stores spread across the city, and its oversize motorcycle shearling from Fall '14 is on the back of every other model in town.It's hard to connect the dots between the unstudied cool of that moto jacket and the mostly overwrought clothes on the runway tonight. The coats, for the most part, were OK. Although there was a lot of superfluous rope crisscrossing this season's shearlings, outerwear is very much in this Swedish brand's wheelhouse. The Viviane Sassen imagery that was converted into a woven raffia and used for high-waisted jeans and a fitted shirtwaist dress was a tougher sell, as were the busy patchwork pantsuits. Freeing the nipple is all very well, but surely there's something more substantial that could've been done with knits, which are another Acne staple.Perhaps it's time for Acne founder Jonny Johansson and his team to go back to the simplicity of that sensational motorcycle shearling and start fresh. Either that or ditch the runway altogether in favor of a different way of promoting the brand. One suggestion overheard tonight: Throw a party. We know of at least a couple hundred people who'd be thrilled to show up. Their faces are pressed up against the glass at the back of these photos.
7 March 2015
Wow: banal with a twist—there's a collection summation that most designers would entirely lack the cojones to coin. But that was the essence of Jonny Johansson's languid précis of his references for the season. "It's about football [soccer], Harris Tweed, jogging—things men like," he said. "And being a bit banal about it."Johansson's insurance is that this collection wasn't banal in the least, although it used the Anglo-masculine generic as a starting point. Shirt checks were blown up, a Barbour-style waxed jacket was oversize, soccer numbers were unaffiliated and turned into relief on patched knitwear. The soccer shirt—a poly-who-knows-what garment that is both foul and addictive—was used as the template (but twisted) for a mid-layer. There was lots of tinkering with old English staples: A covert coat was trimmed into a jacket, and a white fleece had panels of houndstooth. The models wore oversize Michael Caine specs, makeup, and a positive message: Scarves read "Gender equality," and a crewneck was patched with "Radical feminist."Against this mixed mood board of manliness from the waist up was a heavy emphasis on leggings under layers beneath; the middle layer was shorts or detachable skirts pinned into jackets. Sometimes this silhouette (and that makeup) gave these looks a touch of the early Boy Georges—no bad thing.
24 January 2015
The general election in Sweden last September got Acne Studios' Jonny Johansson thinking about the Feminist Initiative, the country's left-wing political party. Though it didn't garner enough votes to earn a seat in parliament, the Initiative became something of a national cause célèbre for furthering gender equality today. Free association took him to broader sartorial notions of feminism, with particular focus on the early 20th century when women began to express their independence by borrowing from menswear and playing competitive sports.The collection began with a lilac sweater that swirled around the model's body, completely constricting her arms. What the giant knit had to do with independence isn't clear, but one could argue that it captured the offbeat, irreverent essence of the Acne Studios brand. Next came a sporty suit in zippered, sandy twill belted with a stylized bungee cord, followed by a roomy wrap coat in ivory boiled wool paired with abstracted houndstooth jacquard leggings. Tweed took many alternative forms, whether as an organza underpinning creeping out from a skirt or a reworked knit pattern. It also came padded on jacket lapels and pockets—and this detail alone was proof enough that the collection didn't get stuck in the past.But there was more to excite: Beyond the white turtlenecks, which confirmed a vaguely alpine theme (the models' ponytails looked like icicles), versions appeared in Solstiss lace under ski sweaters. The trickle-down of this look is guaranteed. As for the Say No to Drugs patches, they are an inside joke between Johansson and a friend in recovery. If not feminist-themed, they count as a rallying cry.
13 January 2015
Waiters were serving naughty canapés as people filed into the Acne Studios show this afternoon. The treats went along with the collection's suggestive prints, which collaged naked nether parts with pieces of fruit and vegetables, flowers, and tubes of lipstick. Made in collaboration with the artist Raquel Dias, they looked like they could've been creative director Jonny Johansson's tweaked take on classic Hermès scarf prints, an impression that was accentuated by the retro aviators and chunky I.D. chain necklaces the models sported.Backstage Johansson said he's been captivated lately by young people's affection for and appropriation of luxury goods, the implication in the statement being that the phenomenon isn't an experience he remembers from his own Swedish youth. But was he endorsing the current situation or poking fun at it? It wasn't always clear. In the case of a strapless minidress made from a teal green terry cloth towel—spa day!—it seemed like Johansson was taking the piss. As for the louche, slightly 1970s tailoring, more often than not it just felt like the models could've used a shirt. But if "haute bourgeois fresh from an afternoon assignation" isn't the most natural fit for Johansson and his Acne label (he's always been a big proponent of fashion androgyny, after all), there were pieces here that felt on-brand. The leather outerwear was typically strong, and we liked the look of two fluid dresses in acid shades of yellow and fuchsia. And you just know that the Instagram generation is going to go crazy for the naughty prints.
27 September 2014
Awkward, askew, askance.Those might have been the three A's knitted into baggy collegiate sweaters at Acne Studios, the increasingly refined Swedish label with the quotidian name. To be fair, the name isn't so much a name as it is an acronym for Ambition to Create Novel Expressions, which sounds much better, plus it's factually correct. Some of the novel expressions in Acne's Spring men's collection included plunging drop-crotch shorts; beaded, intentionally threadbare sweaters tied around the waist; giant-size knit caps; spray-painted stars on an oversize T-shirt; and a generous use of knowingly unbecoming browns.In typical form for Acne, a former denim label approaching its twentieth year, there was also a deliberate, clumsy squareness in the small offering, which creative director Jonny Johansson attributed to a one-size-up approach. "We've always done dry menswear," he said at the live presentation. "There might be a casual preppy vibe and we may work in masculine colors, but it's always in our own unique way."
27 June 2014
Here's a good illustration of the present-day timeline of a trend: A year and a half ago, Acne Studios caused a minor frenzy among editors for the covetable, accessible take on major volume in its August Strindberg-themed Pre-Fall 2013 collection. The clothes that Acne showed this morning, meanwhile, served as the death knell for that exaggerated look, which Acne championed perhaps more than any other brand for the past few seasons. No magnified silhouettes, no proportions elongated to a Mannerist degree. As Acne's Jonny Johansson acknowledged after the briefdéfilé, this collection was all about realism. Inspired by Jeff Wall photos, Johansson's take on realism was dun-colored, for the most part, and aggressively lived-in—faded camo; pre-dirtied white leather; a long, pilled gray knit vest. Even the nattier items were blandly unpretentious, though the hip, cropped fit on a fantastic pair of mannish trousers, and details like the angled hems of a washed-out denim jacket betrayed the design intelligence attending these "generic" clothes.Genericwas Johansson's word, and as he allowed, finding ways to make familiar all-purpose looks seem new and non-invisible is more of a challenge than, say, conjuring a hypertrophied sleeve. But the additional effort paid off—one feels that Acne reallyshouldbe about looks like the dark denim skirt with kick pleats and matching snug jacket with toggles. Normcore? A little. But way nicer than plain old normal.
9 June 2014
There was a moment, not so long ago, when the clothes on Acne Studios' runways and the clothes in Acne's stores looked as though they'd gone their separate ways. The catwalk didn't reflect the Swedish label's streetwear roots. Founder Jonny Johansson set out to correct that last season to a lot of positive feedback. But in retrospect, Spring looks like a collection in reset mode, played out in a minor key. Today's show was much bolder. Johansson and his design team took bigger risks and reaped bigger rewards.Johansson was thinking about the sea. Before the show he explained that he'd spent the summer learning how to surf with his young children at his new beach house in Stockholm and on a trip to L.A., where Acne just opened a store. The personal nature of his starting point reverberated in a collection that connected on many levels.Inspired by the movement of water, undulating screen prints on tweeds keyed into Fall's developing story about optic patterns. In theory, psychedelic swirls paired with oversize leopard prints shouldn't work, but in practice they did. Sweater dressing is the season's hot topic, and Acne had ideas to contribute, including ribbed knits that draped the body like beach towels, and a more conventional pullover intarsia-ed with waves. Johansson said he was particularly proud of the sweater dresses, and he should be. Elsewhere, he tweaked classic workwear shapes in sunset colors and remade surfer staples like anoraks and long, slouchy board shorts in leather. As for the pom-pom hats, they were so crazy large they're all but guaranteed to be a massive hit.
28 February 2014
Jonny Johansson's inspiration du jour was "winter beach." The rocky beaches of the Scandinavian peninsula are more existential than the usual Beach Blanket Bingo variety, and Johansson has lately had opportunity to spend some spiritual time by the water. "One year ago I bought a house in Torö. It was Ingmar Bergman's summer home in the sixties," he said. "It's quite far out and tortured." Which you could also say about the designer himself.But the slight chill in the air seemed to do the collection good. Last season's more conceptual antics—glam rock as inspired by the Swedish outsider artist Hilma af Klint—tested the resolve of Acne Studios' more pragmatic fans. But the label's taste for boundary-pushing waxes and wanes with the seasons. This was a realistic collection of pieces, not lacking in styling brio but not defined by it either. Maybe things were grounded by the emphasis on functionality. That can mean many things. It can be the functionality of a waterproof parka in neoprene; or of a pant made modular by the addition of zippers at the ankles to expand or constrict the shape; or simply the functionality of agreeable pieces, like brushed alpaca topcoats, popover anoraks, and satin varsity jackets, that don't overreach into unnecessary avant-garde territory. The beachy palette of sand, blush, and camel gave it all a new freshness for winter.The collection served as a happy return to a more restrained form. Those who might regret that need only wait. A few long foiled layering pieces and shirts hanging down well past waist level suggested an idea still in development. "A lot of guys in the office wear skirts," Johansson said with a note of bloodhound curiosity. The pendulum will no doubt swing again.
17 January 2014
Pre-Fall gets knocked as the most purely commercial season. But commercial needn't mean boring, as Acne Studio's Jonny Johansson understands. Indeed, Johansson is one of those designers who seems to thrive under constraint: This collection benefited from its refusal to be statement making, with pleasures derived from the interesting mix of materials at play and the relatively gentle attitude of the clothes. There's always a kind of urbane toughness to Acne, and this collection was no different, but it made sense when Johansson explained that his main source of inspiration was the time spent in fall and winter at his relatively new beach house outside Stockholm. There was something earthy, in the most literal sense, about the way the designer mingled the textures of Persian lamb and felted or boiled wool with slick silk, leather, and neoprene; meanwhile, numerous wrapped, draped, and folded wool pieces looked like they'd been riffed off of beach blankets, the kind you wrap up in for a walk along the shore on a brisk day. The typically excellent Acne outerwear had a likewise easy feel, with the standouts being Johansson's new motorcycle jackets executed in shearling, and his color-blocked, quilted anorak, which cinched ever so neatly at the waist. Stovepipe leather and second-skin neoprene tops aside, you couldn't help but feel like this collection just wanted to give you a big hug—a feeling underscored by Johansson's use of naive floral appliqués based on cutouts made by his son. Bless.
6 January 2014
When a brand starts showing on the catwalk, it's entirely proper for the scale of its ambitions to expand. In the past few seasons, though, it's been hard to escape the feeling that Acne Studios was perhaps getting ahead of itself. The collections kept metastasizing, in a completely literal sense, as though expanding the volumes and stretching the proportions of the clothes themselves would suffice to justify Acne's presence on a runway. To put that more plainly, the collections were starting to come off a touch puffed up. This time out, however, Jonny Johansson and his design cohort reeled themselves in.This collection marked an explicit return to the brand's roots, in various ways: There was an emphasis on denim and on workwear-inspired styles, and more generally, the collection was very, very Swedish. Indeed, its starting point, according to Johansson, was the poem "Till Havs," as performed by the Swedish opera singer Jussi Björling; showgoers today were treated to a very galvanizing rendition of the tune. And then they were treated to a fast-paceddéfiléof the most accessible looks Acne has shown in a while. There's going to be a sizable constituency for this season's white laser-cut leather pieces, for instance, not to mention the oversize button-downs, elasticized bustiers, and tonal denim. "Till Havs" translates as "At Sea," and the collection thus reflected a mariner theme, with lots of seafaring stripes and naval peacoat styles; in a puckish touch, there were also tiny anchor-shaped embellishments. Johansson hasn't jettisoned his taste for largeness entirely: There were a handful of webbed knits with sleeves that extended past the fingertips, for example. But in general, this collection felt refreshingly measured. The only complaint here, really, was that Johansson pursued a few too many ideas; a stiff edit would have made this a stronger outing. Still, the ship has righted itself.
27 September 2013
The Swedish outsider artist Hilma af Klint is having a mini moment, thanks to a Stockholm retrospective of the wall-size abstract drawings she made at the beginning of the twentieth century. One of her new adherents is Acne's Jonny Johansson. He was so taken with the mystical af Klint, who aimed to represent the philosophical ideas of her day in her work, that he dedicated his Spring men's collection to her. "She was before Mondrian, she was before Kandinsky," he was marveling as he flipped through the exhibition catalog. He might just as well have gestured up at his clothes. He'd adapted her pieces into the collection's prints. "When I saw her color palette, I thought this is my color palette," he said, pointing to her milky pinks, yellows, and blues. "I relate to this. Everyone thinks of Sweden as gray. I don't relate to that."Those who see things differently often find that their visions look odd to others. That's a common enough Acne pitfall. The ledge was close here. You could look at the foil-stamped linen suiting and puddling, yard-wide chinos and see a young club kid's fantasy; Johansson, wide-eyed, professed to see the sea. Probably it was both. This collection, which sat tapered-to-extremes suiting next to those mega-trousers and raw-edged fraying jackets and cocoon coats inspired by fifties couture, was a kitchen-sink-and-all doozy. But that is the philosophical idea, circa 2013: The ideas aren't in the mix, they are the mix. If it doesn't always go down smoothly, that's the price of admission. It's one Johansson is willing to pay. "I would like to be a sign of the times if I can," he said. "Whether good or bad, I want to be doing something contemporary."
27 June 2013
Only at Acne does a collection premised on a "functional gardening look" include a gold-foil-stamped linen suit. Or a pair of swingy shorts covered in iridescent sequins. Disco horticulture!But the antic energy Jonny Johansson brings to Acne's women's collections—one he conserves for the workroom, to judge from his plainspoken explanations—has a fizz that can't be denied. On a wet, gray June day, it was hard not be grateful for that, and for the tropical Jack Pierson photographs that were blown up to set the stage for the show. Johansson explained that he'd recently bought a new house in Stockholm with a beautiful, ruined garden. He was fascinated with the idea of coaxing life out of it. Thus the new collection. It may come in hothouse colors, but that's how Acne's garden grows.In fact, this felt pared back from some of Acne's recent outings, with their wild, inflated volumes. Here, the air had been let out a bit. What seemed like acres of fabric still flowed—some of the long sheaths had tails so long they needed knotting together—but they followed a more natural line. Is that something to do with Melanie Ward, the stylist most famous for finessing Helmut Lang's less-is-more collections in the nineties? Maybe. Resort marked her debut styling the show.But primary credit to the designer, in whom the garden brought out the best. There was a great knock-around jacket in garment-dyed cotton with ponyskin patches that actuallydidlook ready for a tumble in the dirt. The workwear bit may have disguised some of the glamour—that bustier top will look great without the shirt, on anyone with the toned abs that are emerging as Resort's must-have accessory—but there's also a kind of outré glamour in work, too. It was hard not to think of Katharine Hepburn, making her sole Oscars appearance in her gardening togs, outshining the rest of the world in their gowns.
9 June 2013
After showing in London for several seasons, Acne decamped to Paris this time out, and with good reason. Ahead of creating the new collection, creative director Jonny Johansson embarked on a collaboration with the artist Katerina Jebb, in which they explored the archive of historical garments at the Musée Galliera, the Musée de la Mode de la Ville de Paris. That exploration was the foundation of this collection. As Johansson explained after today's show, he and Jebb were enamored of the interiors of these antique clothes, and they sought to expose their hidden construction. For Jebb that meant scanning the pieces inside out, and creating photomontages that were used as the collection's print. Johansson, meanwhile, elaborated various elements of garment construction by revealing and exaggerating them, for instance by making a motif of an oversize chain "stitch."This was rich material to play with, and the sheer variety of ideas on the runway, and the riot of color and fabric, gave you a sense of Johansson's exuberance about the project. And as usual, there were a lot of fine pieces here, like the men's and women's suit jackets and gilets that had been roughly gathered, and the women's short, sharp vests accented in metallic leather. In addition, Johansson's nubby bouclé looks were a highlight, especially those embellished with the stitchlike chain.Overall, however, this was a mixed effort. The emphasis on layering meant there wasn't a clear message on proportion or silhouette. The oversizing here was a disappointment, as well—Johansson knows how to magnify a garment with flair, as his terrific pre-fall collection attested, but in this instance the models often seemed lost in their clothes. The scale didn't feel particularly specific. Nor, for that matter, did the off-kilter construction of much of the tailoring: Johansson said he'd made his jackets fall askew because he wanted them to feel relaxed, but the off-ness read as mannered instead.Acne is a brand with enormous reserves of talent. Johansson's ambition is plain, and he and his team have earned their place on the big stage of Paris. But they seem to have developed a habit of damping the effect of their very good ideas, like this season's central theme of exposed construction, by throwing more ideas on top of them and not attending to the edit with sufficient discipline. A bit more focus would be welcome.
1 March 2013
Acne is knitting together its men's and its women's. Jonny Johansson, fresh off a trip to New York to introduce Acne's women's pre-fall was at the Crillon in Paris today to debut its Fall men's—both collections, it turned out, were inspired by Swedish playwright, director, book collector, narcissist, and paramour August Strindberg. An exhibition at Stockholm's Fotografiska photo museum had shed new light on Strindberg for the Swedes. Here in the U.S., he's best known as the author ofMiss Julie, but Johansson and his team discovered he was also a canny self-promoter and dandy, with a love of his own image and a deep interest in propagating it. The show focused on Strindberg's portraits and self-portraits, which he would print on cards and distribute. He was into branding a century before branding.That makes him an interesting choice for a fashion label, even beyond the possibilities for dandified menswear his own wardrobe suggests. Johansson worked plenty of that in, too. A fur-collared peacoat suggested Strindberg's navy Swedish military garb, the extra-long shirts worn loose, the styles of the nineteenth century. An appealing watercolor print was taken from the hand-printed Florentine paper of one of the collector's books. Neck scarves, giant teddy-bear shearlings, and cropped pant lengths would've been the additions of more modern dandies.It was a smaller showing than usual for the label, but that's in part due to the push and pull that results when a former two become one. If Acne is conserving resources, all the better to prepare for the women's show it's planning for Paris fashion week, its debut on that calendar. It will be created in collaboration with the photographer and artist Katerina Jebb and the Musée Galliera's maverick director, Olivier Saillard. In the spirit of coming together, it will include a few looks for men.
17 January 2013
Outside of Sweden, August Strindberg is best known as a playwright, and particularly as the writer of the frequently revived dramaMiss Julie.In his homeland, however, the figure of Strindberg looms large: As Jonny Johansson explained at the Acne Studios presentation today, he's revered as a novelist, a poet, a painter, and a man of ideas. And you might say that Strindberg loomed extra large over Acne this season. Inspired by portraits of Strindberg that he happened to stumble onto, Johansson turned out a compelling collection of classic, essentially utilitarian pieces that had been exaggerated to almost comic effect. Emphasis onalmost—though there was a sense of whimsy here, notably in the cross-body bags with absurdly long straps, the exaggerated volumes and proportions were the product of serious and canny thought. Johansson's idea was to reinterpret the layered and padded look of Swedish winter kit, feminizing rugged outerwear by cutting coats in A-line and cocoon shapes, and updating the silhouettes further with superlong bell sleeves and oversize hoods and collars.That strategy made for some standout parkas, adapted peacoats, and cozy faux furs. Johansson doubled down on his exaggeration theme by layering those coats over long, flowing button-downs and culottes so surreally big, you'd have to describe them as "vast." The giant culotte has emerged as an Acne staple in recent seasons; indeed, exaggerated volumes and proportions have, themselves, become something of a brand signature. Given all his practice, it's not surprising that Johansson's take on the theme was fluent; what made for a welcome improvement, this time out, was that the exaggerations never seemed arbitrary. At its heart, this was a practical collection made up of easy-to-comprehend items that had been made to look fresh. And what with the writerly source material, it was only fitting that there was poetry to be found here, too, with painted florals and a winning suit of lynx-printed wool.
6 January 2013
"Meet me at the wrecking ball, wrecking ball, I'll wear something pretty and white…" So goes the chorus of the Neil Young tune "Wrecking Ball." According to Acne designer Jonny Johansson, Emmylou Harris' plaintive cover of "Wrecking Ball" inspired this season's Acne show—a show that did not, in fact, kick off with a look that was pretty and white, but that did feature country-western atmospherics, not to mention T-shirts that said, simply, MUSIC. Well, sure. Who can't get behind that?Johansson explained after the show that, for him, music and, in this instance, "Wrecking Ball," conjures a certain aesthetic, and a certain girl. This season, she was a girl much more rustic and unraveled than the Acne regular, given to wearing absolutely gigantic parachute skirts, raw-hem poet blouses, and engineer stripes. "Romantic" is the word Johansson used to describe the collection, and the tone came through. There were some quality looks that emerged from it, like those parachute skirts, and the plain tops with flounced cuffs, and the striped ones that sat off the shoulder. But Johansson couldn't quite get himself to the emotional place he seemed to want to go with these clothes—the Emmylou Harris place, if you will, that's so openly, fearlessly vulnerable. The Acne girl is just too tough for that.So, perhaps unsurprisingly, the best looks were the ones that were within her traditional comfort zone: After a sad little summer romance in the country—ka-pow!—she was back in town, kicking ass and taking names in graphic leathers, buckled vests, knee-high lug-sole sandals, and the most hands-down fantastic pants seen thus far for Spring '13. Johansson showed his narrow, slashed-ankle bad boys in numerous iterations, and well he should have: They will likely prove one of the must-have items of the season. All in all, this was a mixed result for Acne. There were plenty of pieces that will kill at retail, but the brand labored at being directional, and it showed.
15 September 2012
Denim is the seed from which Acne grew, but in recent years, Jonny Johansson has steered the label—at least as far as the runway is concerned—in a different direction. "We never wanted to be just a denim brand," Johansson said. "We were afraid to show too much denim, to be put in a box." That the opening look for Spring was full-on jean signaled something of a homecoming. Johansson explained that workwear had been a particular font of inspiration, and where work is concerned, denim often follows close behind. But while there were echoes of that in the raw-edged denim vests and classic jean jackets, and perhaps also in the looser, boxier silhouette, flourishes like the scuffed gold and silver lace-up shoes added a note of tarnished glamour. So did an oversized striped T-shirt and matching pants in striped satin.The two strands intertwined in what amounted to a four-piece suit: matching denim jacket, vest, tunic, and pant, Acne's entry in the season-wide arms race of top-to-toe looks. (Simplified versions of sleeveless tunic tops and matching pants in paneled leather were literally all about the arm.)The last few seasons have represented a growing confidence for the label, which now finds itself with credit to spend. A bit curious it did so on a collection this compressed. Maybe what was offered today wasn't so much a return to roots as a way station on the continuing journey forward.
29 June 2012
Yesterday, what felt like every fashion editor on earth was shuttled from appointment to appointment—mercifully, many in Milk Studios, site of Acne's mini-presentation—with what felt like every fashion brand on earth. It's been grumbled before, but more than ever it felt that Resort, formerly a commercial collection paraded past buyers only, has become a full-fledged fashion season. Time to breathe? Don't count on it.So when Acne's Jonny Johansson said that he was thinking of the herky-jerky pace of Madonna's "Ray of Light" video when designing his new collection, you knew what he meant. He was tapping the pace and the frenetic energy of street style and its newly minted style stars. "These girls are the ones going really fast," he said backstage before the presentation. Naturally—everything can change in the space of a shutter click.Light was right for this collection. White was seen on treated cottons, cupro, and silk, like the silk "jean jacket" with pick stitches, as if its wearer had altered it herself. (Not unheard of among the street-style set.) There were loose, easygoing bermuda shorts and gym shorts in silk. Oversized blazers had a throw-and-go usefulness, though their floaty, money-print pattern seemed a little too jokey even for the peacocks. Even without that, there were plenty of pieces that should have legs. A dip-dyed slouchy caftan had both surprise and chic on its side, for instance. Meanwhile, a white leather jacket—even in the warm months, Acne will never go without leather—had the brand's name crawling up its sleeve. If Acne is entering logomania, it felt right that it would do so a bit askew. The street-style girl, Johansson said, is "using herself as a medium." Now he's using her, too.
10 June 2012
The key word at tonight's Acne show wasambition. If last season's collection introduced a new sense of scale to the brand, then this one doubled down on it: Acne maestro Jonny Johansson seized on a trio of body-obsessed artists for inspiration, blenderized the references, and came up with a vision for Fall '12 that was directional, remarkable, and rather strange.The key figure in Johansson's art trio was undoubtedly the photographer André Kertész, from whom Johansson took his cues for the collection's distorted silhouettes. (The other artists cited were erotic sculptor Hans Bellmer and the painter Hanneline Røgeberg, who inspired the collection's palette.) Johansson achieved distortion in a variety of ways. There were coats sculpted out of shiny shoe leather, shaved down in special machines, that held the arms slightly aloft from the body. There were fitted dresses paneled together from flesh-toned pieces of fabric in organlike shapes, and cropped, puckered knits. Most intriguingly, there were a variety of trousers that simultaneously raised and sank the waistline, such as the pair of burgundy pants that appeared to be slung low on the hip, over a matching zipped girdle; in fact, it was all one garment. A mannish burgundy suit, trimmed in black elastic, was the most winning representation of this idea.At times, it was hard to figure out how this collection would play on the street. Johansson is certainly challenging his consumer, but he also presented them with some silhouette-shifting ideas that won't be too hard to digest. The low-slung cut of the pants here will make an impact, for one, as will the collection's wide belting and oversize jackets and coats. On the whole, this collection served notice to anyone who still primarily thinks of Acne as a denim brand: They're playing a new game now, and they intend to play in the big leagues.
18 February 2012
Can you really fake it to make it? Jonny Johansson at Acne set out to find out. He began the Fall collection mulling the idea of fakeness and fraudulence, especially as concerns fabrics and materials, those that pretend to be something they're not. Enter leatherette. "The interesting thing is, you stumble into the fabrics and you don't particularly like them," Johansson said backstage after the show. In a season rich—over-rich—with leather and fur, there's a freshness to going faux. And it suits the young men Johansson has in mind, and the young men who buy his label.The fake materials—not only leatherette and vinyl but polyester, pile, and faux fur, too—gelled with the dressed-up grunge feel of the collection. The original grunge kids were anti-precious and reveled in the kind of nose-thumbing that Johansson emulated here by sticking pleather on a Paris runway. For added effect, he played it off high fabrics like mohair and Harris tweed. The achievement at Acne is to keep the rebel spirit and the high end both intact. In Johansson and his team's hands, grunge got elegant. The way looks were cobbled together almost haphazardly, short lengths over long, shorts over pants, was willfully odd. But it was tied together and elevated by the keen eye for color combinations and proportion.In the midst of working with fakes, Johansson was thinking about an emotion that's anything but: the uncertainty and pain of young love. Who writhes like a heartsick kid does? The designer sprayed shirts and sweats with soulful but almost mocking prints of hearts, and charted a careering course between buoyant brights and moody black.
21 January 2012
Youth flies by in a flash. Ever after, it's remembered by totems and touchstones. Proust had his madeleine. Kane had his sled. Jonny Johansson has his MTV."When I was growing up, MTV was very important for fashion," Johansson said at Acne's Paris showroom. "TV is not really something you talk about. But the glorious moment of MTV was what I wanted to capture."The teenager glued toHouse of Stylewas the muse of Acne's pre-fall collection. "It's a schoolgirl who styles herself a little bit," Johansson explained. The look was, accordingly, a little vintage and a little haphazard. There was plenty to concern a mother: ultra-short skirts in jazzy silver foil, see-through blouses in a rose print, and cropped sweaters baring a hint of flesh. Many pieces felt purposefully secondhand, like the cropped, bell-leg trousers; others looked adapted to fit, like school uniform shirts with sewn-on jersey corseting.Befitting its inspiration, the collection also felt young. But a maturer designing hand was evident in clever touches like the zipped pocket that held coat belts in place.
20 January 2012
There was an unfamiliar feeling in the air after this evening's Acne show: excitement. Acne designer Jonny Johansson sent out a taut, terrific collection, and it snapped everyone in the audience to attention. It's hard to put your finger on exactly what made these clothes work so well; maybe it was that they expressed, with ease and confidence, Johansson's internal tension about seizing on a recent trip to Marrakech for inspiration. As the designer explained after the show, he went to Morocco bored in advance of all the fashion clichés the place had birthed, and left with the unhappy feeling that he, too, had been influenced. That ambivalence made him work extra-hard, apparently, to reconsider the city, and interpret its colors and attitude in a way that felt relevant and urbane.Thus, the signature Acne garment this season is a broad cotton caftan, worn as a top and trimmed with graphic, tapelike strips of contrast color. The loose, airy feel of Marrakech style showed up, as well, in the collection's capacious shorts and culottes, a key silhouette. But Johansson remixed the reference, mashing it up with seriously street looks such as crop tops laser-cut with stars, and cropped leather motorcycle jackets and pants inset with racing stripes and panels of sparkly plastic. The pants, in particular, are going to fly off the racks. The collection's other big theme was a kind of über femininity, seen in flared and full skirts and little peplum jackets; here, the designer struck an original tone by experimenting with his materials, making these pieces out of dense-looking bonded silk, cotton, denim, and more. Johansson also played graphic games with color, punctuating his primary palette of white, black, and denim blue with earthy greens, rusts, and ochers, plus some bracing hits of lavender, pink, and electric blue.On the whole, this collection set a new bar for Acne as a fashion house, as opposed to merely a bellwether street-wear brand. That said, you'll be seeing these pieces on the street; at a certain point during the show, one got the sense that the insider audience had stopped taking notes and started writing their preorders. That's always a good sign. Be on the lookout for Acne's giant-tasseled loafers: The black pairs will be a hit, and the ones in sparkly electric blue will be a fashion phenomenon.
17 September 2011
For a guy often accused of popularizing Swedish design, Acne's Jonny Johansson doesn't rhapsodize about the notion. "Historically we don't have a fashion background, really," he said after his latest Acne show. "Architecture, yes. Design, yes. But fashion?" And yet tonight's show was his homage to his homeland. He looked to the seventies for inspiration, a time when, as he is well-placed to recall, denim was beginning to be imported en masse.If denim was important to the development of Scandinavian fashion, it's also been crucial to the development of Acne, which rose to fame on the strength of its jeans. And investing in what it does best helped the label turn out a very fine collection. There was romance and retro both in the rounded club collars, cabled sweaters tucked into chinos, the loafers, and tapered, trouser-cut jeans. Reinforcing the mood was the soft, muted palette that dominated the show. But there was newness, too, in the addition of athletic elements, borrowed from Johansson's runner friends. Their running leggings and bike shorts inspired the paneled viscose tights and mini shorts.They exemplified the functionalism that Johansson sees as the true Swedish heritage—even if he classed it up with patent evening shoes or a raw suede pullover. Individually, you might have seen versions of some of these pieces before. But you wouldn't have seen them thrown in the blender with the rest like you did here. And that—not jeans—is what keeps Acne chugging along.
25 June 2011
Acne staged a culture clash for its Resort presentation: "a downtown 'young jeans' girl," in the words of creative director Jonny Johansson, crashing into the fabrics and shapes of midcentury couture. There were what looked like acres of taffeta, organza, silk, and linen at the label's first New York presentation, and silhouettes from the height ofhautein the 1940's and fifties.That meant a new emphasis on volume for a company that rode the skinny-jean wave to the top and an insistent femininity, despite the brand's beginnings in rocker chick (and dude) androgyny. It's a course Acne has been pursuing for a few seasons, and it's getting more sure-footed as it goes. In the case of this presentation, looks were styled to the nines—which, in a few cases, might've been three too many. Billowing taffeta trousers emerged from under tight pencil skirts and proper cap-sleeve dresses ("interrupted volume," Johansson called it). In other instances, as in a black taffeta ball gown under a destroyed denim jacket, the look felt closer to what you might find off the runway.For all the fifties references, Johansson wasn't precious with his materials, letting them crinkle and crease organically. As usual, his color sense was spot-on, too: A rich palette of pumpkin, plum, sea foam, and lemon yellow set off the black, white, and denim indigo. It made what could've been fussy, fun. That's never a bad step to take. And if any of Acne's old fans were looking for more jeans than the runway lap showed, they'll surely be sated when the collection hits shop floors.
8 June 2011
After the Acne show this morning, Jonny Johansson was so choked with emotion that you had to wonder if this was an Acne watershed we'd just witnessed. You know, the kind that comes before a major announcement. In fact, the showwasa sort of good-bye. Johansson felt he was closing a chapter of the brand's history, with the next chapter perhaps anticipated by the changes in sensibility seen in the pre-fall collection. But, for this season at least, it was still Acne business as usual.For starters, that meant the peculiar androgyny that is one of the brand's signatures. First look: cropped overalls with platform sandals and sheer, flesh-toned socks. Johansson claimed inspiration from the girls in his design studio, people who conjured maximum cool out of minimum budget, reconfiguring workwear as a chic little something. Those transformations informed the way chunky, functional shapes were matched with fluid, floor-length skirts or patched with metallic leather. But Johansson said he'd also been looking at the work of British artist Daniel Silver, so he was thinking about sculptural forms. Kudos to that somewhat abstract influence if it dictated the appealing volumes of the clothes, particularly when they were shown in richly colored leather: Oversize biker jackets and vests and cropped trousers and overalls appeared in shades of burgundy, dusty pink, mustard, and olive. They were the most persuasive pieces in the show. But it was the color palette as a whole that made this show a satisfying postscript to Acne 1.0.
19 February 2011
Acnemay have its big-boy bona fides in order—international distribution, its own literary journal, the occasional show in Kensington Palace, even a much-touted collaboration with Lanvin before its fellow Swedes at H&M reached the atelier d'Elbaz—but it's always pitched itself as the label of guys just wanna have fun. And then its Fall collection emphasizes the suit?"It's just a feeling, you know," creative director Jonny Johansson shrugged after the show. "All the tailoring—I thought that was in the moment, something fresh. I'm tired of all this heritage, the older models or whatever. It's time for something young."That translated into a series of overcoats paired with suit pants, as well as the two-piecers themselves. The idea of a man's first suit is one that's been gripping other designers during this very sartorial season—Kris Van Assche, for example, was mulling it, too. It's also good business, especially at Acne's relatively modest price point: The suit revolution of the past few years has trickled down to the younger generation, and it's labels like Acne to which they'll turn.The Acne cut is youthful, with slightly cropped pants and low-buttoning jackets in different styles (single- and double-breasteds, standard lapels and shawl collars), all in Italian bonded wool. The hitch is that, on the runway at least, they can look a little flat, even when pepped up by accents of raspberry, royal blue, or teal. "It's the way they dress," Johansson said of his clientele. "It's that moment when you're not grown up and at the same time, not a kid. The kind of sexual energy that brings." Keep looking down, to the boys' shiny patent Chelsea boots, and you could get a better sense of the signature Acne charge.
22 January 2011
The pre-fall phenomenon has yet to make much impression on Sweden, soAcne's contribution to fashion's newest season was unsurprisingly low-key. A mere ten looks, in fact. But, as edited as they were, they still pointed to new possibilities for the brand. Androgyny has been something of a signature for the label. Here it took a back seat to the unambiguous womanliness of flared full skirts, fitted shifts, and a sensational ponyskin coat-dress.As is often the case with Acne, founder Jonny Johansson's backstory was even more riveting than the clothes. He had been on an art weekend at Lismore Castle, the Irish seat of the Duke of Devonshire for the past 250 years, and he was inspired by the women of the family, a clan that includes the living legend Debo, Dowager Duchess. "I was never drawn to something classic before, but now I had a reason to do it," said Johansson. The plainness of a white shirt tucked into an elastic-waist skirt did, in fact, suggest the no-nonsense chatelaine of a grand country estate out for a stroll through her garden. Not so the urban black leather or the denims with their bejeweled trim, which efficiently targeted Acne's established customer base.
20 January 2011
Jonny Johansson sent a mixed message with today's show of Acne Studio's womenswear. "Nothing retro, no references," he said of the clothes, after a presentation that had taken place in Apartment 1A, Princess Margaret's old digs at Kensington Palace, about as retro a location as the Establishment allows. Photographs of old-school glamour-puss Margaret by then-husband Lord Snowdon covered the walls, and the distant thumping was surely the sound of her flipping in her grave as a parade of serious teens filed by in Acne's casually diffident clothing. You could imagine the old girl snarling, "Damn hippies." That was, after all, partly the reaction Johansson was courting.Asked to define what was "Swedish" about the clothes, the designer answered, "Spiritual, natural…hippie." The question of identity was a valid one, because it is actually quite hard to discern just what makes Acne distinctive—and yet it's a wardrobe staple for an impressive number of stylish women. Here, they would have latched onto the languor of a lo-o-o-ong red sweater over a floor-length tube. If they fancied layering up in blue, there was a navy knit over a floating chiffon shirt and leggings. If they wanted something up-to-the minute, there was a look that echoed the vintage bathing suit-cum-playsuit that is popping up all over for Spring.Anyone looking for a harder edge—or maybe a flavor of Acne's former collaboration with Lanvin—could settle on the silver python-print shift with the big zipper that Alber Elbaz loves so much. There was tough glamour in leathers studded with freshwater black pearls. And there was an interesting backstory in other skins that had been embossed with Samoan motifs by a new collaborator, a female tattoo artist. And maybe that all adds up to a brand of distinction.
18 September 2010
You want a great night out to go on forever. At least that's how Acne's Jonny Johansson felt after partying at Le Tango in Paris with Christopher Lundmann and the rest of his men's design team. It made him think of the kind of summer dances he used to go to when he was growing up in the Swedish countryside, and from that came a collection that combined a seventies silhouette with the disco languor of jersey and an androgynous schoolboy element.Imagine a Junior League Studio 54 in Stockholm, and you'll get a sense of Johansson's nostalgic fun factor. Schoolboy shorts and layered T-shirts shared space with a lean double-breasted navy suit, the pants high-waisted and flared, or a pair of leather dungarees that suggested another sort of seventies club altogether. Walking through the collection, Lundmann insisted that, concise as it was, it comprised an entire summer wardrobe, from sporty day to dressed-up night (the metallic sandals were a contemporary touch). The lingering impression was that these were clothes that would equally suit Acne boysandAcne girls, and you get the feeling that's not something Johansson would be particularly upset about.
26 June 2010
With its Swedish roots, Acne has no weighty fashion heritage to live up to. "We can do what we want," says company founder Jonny Johansson. For Resort, that meant a collection that was, somewhat incongruously, inspired byBlack White + Gray, the recent documentary about the relationship between Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe. "Their mix of uptown and downtown, against a backdrop of 1970's New York," was how Johansson described it. Hence the leather pants and waistcoats with butch biker caps. A leather shift dress was saddle-stitched in a technique the Swedes calllaskad. And, this being Acne, all skins were bio-leather from an old artisanal company.Balancing the butchness were fluid, drapey pieces in washed jersey, like a suit with a definite shoulder, sort of seventies going on forties, but sinuous enough to strip away the formality. A jersey halter dress had a whiff of Halston about it. And there was some of that designer's easy glamour in a cardigan jacket in black paillettes. Johansson referenced the jewelry Mapplethorpe designed with skull and crystal pendants. "I like a bit of spirituality," he said. That, however, was decidedly lacking in the shoe style called Pixel, with its literally killer heel of one long single nail.
25 June 2010
Jonny Johansson's world has been invaded by droids. As the father of six- and three-year-old sons who are obsessed withThe Clone Warscartoons and collectible figures as only small boys can be, he shrugs, "We have to watch it and play it all the time. It's sort of embarrassing, but that's where my inspiration comes from—always close to home."Not so embarrassing, actually, since the domestic goings-on at Johansson's house in Stockholm this winter happen to have landed Acne's Fall collection plumb in the center of Planet Fashion's current sci-fi-tinged fantasies. Led by Iris Strubegger, the models who flew into London for the show had spray-painted foreheads and greasy glitter around their eyes and stomped onstage wearing cartoonish boots with Lego-like soles, dressed like some postapocalyptic alien militia.The vibe gave Johansson a formula to upgrade cool Nordic streetwear to a fashion level—drapey fatigues, banana-shaped pants with zippered ankles, jumpsuits, oversize sweaters, and scarves wrapped as hoods. The most outstanding piece: a rough-hewn patchworked, primitive-looking long-haired jacket that was a grunge-luxe upgrade of Acne's best-selling aviator shearling. It could easily be taken for fur, but as Johansson put it, "Nope. All sheep. They brush them these days."
1 February 2010
There isn't a fashion watcher on earth who isn't dying to know what the news for Spring's going to be—and the action's already started in London at Acne's presentation. Even from halfway across the room and through a thicket of models standing in formation, it was easy to zero in on the newest idea: two ethereally hip, long pale dresses. Too early to say, of course, whether fluid-to-the-floor will sweep the world. But they did make the body-con dresses standing nearby seem a bit seen-that-last-year. And that counts for something.Jonny Johansson, just arrived from Sweden to present at the Barbican Centre, said he'd been at a friend's wedding on a beach in the south of France and found himself designing in a meditative, spiritual mood. "I don't really like hippie or New Age, but I felt I wanted something slightly mystical." The lineup was full of the urban-chic tailoring and jeans that have made Johansson an accidental cult hero to thousands. One of them, a small blonde woman in a short white dress, turned out to be Kylie Minogue. "I don't know her, but it's nice to meet her," he shrugged, looking surprised. Johansson has a collaborative curiosity and an instinct for doing things just because they feel right to him. "I don't like traveling much, or think about 'inspiration.' I dig where I stand," he explained.He worked in loose silks for drop-crotch pants and tie-dyed, scrunched textures, sharpening the look with cropped jackets and several variations on cutaway vests. He also set about elaborating on and elevating Acne denim by sending jeans to the British jeweler Husam El Odeh, who came back with flexible silver nickel plates to bolt on as knee armor and back-pocket patches. There were also signature suedes and one great dusty-gray jacket with a fringe in back. But it was the two narrow, languid floor-length silhouettes—one in body-skimming ivory jersey, the other in pale beige crepe with long sleeves and shoulder pads—that best conveyed the relaxed but subtly glamorous aura Johansson was talking about. Their simplicity would qualify them as wearable by day, but his addition of seemingly random sprinklings of mismatched Crystallized Swarovski Elements lent a touch of cool magic to distinguish the look from minimalism.
1 September 2009
Jonny Johansson of Acne, the Swedish fashion phenomenon, isn't one of those guys who goes about his business like a big shot. "I'm from reindeer country," he likes to tell people. But he's infiltrated the international denim, T-shirt, and well-priced separates markets with such indie integrity that all kinds of cool people want to be associated with the brand. Like, for starters, Alber Elbaz, who buddied up to the Swede to make Lanvin's hit jeans collection. It was a big stride, nonetheless, for Johansson to pitch up in London and show his line outside Stockholm for the first time. In typical fashion, he lured the curious to the Sir John Soane's Museum, an obscure and marvelous cabinet of ancient and architectural artifacts that many hometowners have never heard of.What Johansson presented was a far cry from jeanswear basics. "It started when I was sitting in the Café de Flore in Paris and thinking what to do," he said. "I looked over, saw an old guy, maybe in his seventies, hanging out, and his hands were covered in rings. So I started drawing." That image, linked with an inspiration about the kind of girls who populate the Berlin art scene, gave rise to a collection that ran from well-cut tailoring (overcoats and seventies high-waisted pantsuits) to plastic jeans to chunky gold and diamond jewelry made in collaboration with the venerated German artist-goldsmith Michael Zobel. Huge cuffs, rings big enough to occupy two fingers, and saucer or box-shaped pins—all set with rough diamonds, Tahitian pearls, emeralds, seashells, or rough-hewn slabs of semiprecious stones—drew the most attention, and surprise. Delving into precious jewelry might seem reckless in a stalled economy, but Johansson promises he's only following the instincts that have driven him to success since he started in 1993. Acne, after all, is an acronym for Ambition to Create Novel Expressions. He and his team don't play by conventional rules. And as he pointed out, the much-trusted jeans and T-shirts are constantly available online, anyway.
8 February 2009