Jonny Johansson was pondering age this season: something that’s only natural as your brand turns 30. He sighed: “It felt like something I needed to deal with, even though I tried to skip it. You’re young, young, young, and then, all of a sudden…” Happily the attitude infused into Acne Studios still hews towards the best aspects of youthfulness. It’s inquisitive, self-aware, subversive, mischievous, and runs instinctively at odds with established givens.
Take this lookbook, which satirized the endemically soulless polish of countless cookie-cutter equivalents from less dimensional, more expensive luxury brands. The side-eye it came with was inspired, Johansson said, by a recent rewatching of the Princess Diana portrayal in The Crown: “It’s a show I find hilarious.”
Johansson’s milestone-sparked instinct to lean towards classicism is in sync with the broader wave, but the designer rode it in his own distinct way. He had discovered a stack of vintage menswear catalogues that reminded him of the sartorial didacticism of old: how to tie a tie, unpacking the meaning of elbow patches, that kind of thing. “It was also about individualism” he said, “but now with the speed of aesthetic consumption it’s all about full looks.”
This prompted him to mine surfaces to excavate detail. Some of these details were self-referential, including a new edition of the 1996 jeans that started Acne’s development, or the re-adaptation of a totally beautiful Italian loden coat cut with a mega-vent instead of a box pleat and fitted to the body rather than being conventionally enveloping. “We did that first in about 2003.” Jeans were overlaid with prints from stylings of yore, and sometimes taped over again to create a triple layer of reference.
There were daddyish-details like the square suede elbow patches applied to Acne-trademark MA-1-ish bombers (also very ’90s French prep), or the twisted-Pitti, dandy punkishness of the strongly played cravat game. Leather western shirts and aviator jackets were hardcore dadcore whose provenance was signalled by the dark shadows of weathering at their seams. The cuts of Johansson’s blazers, and long and kicky or high and clutched pants, were accentuated as a parodic teasing in the spirit of a teenage son gently lampooning a midlife dad. Johansson sighed in wearily affectionate recognition at the metaphor.
Originally published at Vogue
