Marking 30 years of Acne Studios, in a maze-like set recalling the brand’s London Fashion Week debut, Jonny Johansson looks backwards to move forwards. t at Kensington Palace
Acne Studios turning 30 has naturally led founder Jonny Johansson to reflect upon its history. This show’s many roomed setting was revived from the show at which Acne debuted in London fashion week. I can just about remember that show: in retrospect I strongly under-appreciated the fact that we were in Princess Margaret’s apartments in Kensington Palace. Johansson had scored the venue through Lord Snowdon, who was shooting for Acne at that time. “How many years ago was that?” wondered Johansson today, shaking his head in wonder. Let’s not go there.
The interconnected chambers of Acne’s set vaguely reflected the library of memories whose ricochets of remembrance inflected this collection. It incorporated wearable grown-upness, but these mid-life signifiers were tempered by the irreverently intelligent and unconventional spirit that is Acne for life. The royal pleated tweed skirts in some aggressively domestic checks were inspired by Lisbeth, the late mother of Johansson’s best friend Nils, who always wore such garments while conducting piano lessons. These were turned from classical to experimental thanks to the unconventional melody of their placement against neck-slung blazers or python blousons above double layered shirts and boots as curlingly pointed as a withering remark.
Ladylike dresses in lemon or silver were pressed and distorted as if just pulled from a flatly-packed archive: under the lemon version you could see a cheetah print base-layer. Pointed pumps were garlanded with five wonkily placed leather and grosgrain ribbons. A shearling aviator was worn super-small, as if almost grown out of, while a black leather cropped trench and two double-breasted silk coats were oversized, as if not yet grown into. The face-printed pieces employed images from Paul Kooiker’s portraits of art school students that were shown at Acne Paper Palais Royal, the brand’s gallery space, last year.
There was a fun ongoing bourgeois luxury parody punctuated by fake fur encirclements; fur earrings, fur cuffs, fur collars, fur fringed boots and more. The house’s bracingly dadcore ’80s-shape bag, the Camero, was delivered in some handsome, apparently time-cracked finishes. Over the system Beth Gibbons sang the mantra: “Never found our way regardless of what they say: how can it feel this wrong?”
See the full Acne Studios AW26 collection below.
Originally published by Vogue Runway