Right here and right now, Acne is the Ace of Spades in Sweden's fashionable deck of cards. With catwalk shows in both Paris and London, worldwide shops and critical acclaim from both industry insiders and fussy punters, the brand is today a top player in the world of fashion. Sweden is influential from a stylistic point of view, and there's plenty of smaller and inspirational designers, but there are few brands that possess any real sartorial power. Except for Acne.
But this fact is just another ironic brick in a fashion house that was built on, well, irony. Many of you have heard the well-known story, almost fashion folklore by now, how Acne started manufacturing jeans. In the mid-Nineties, and to this day, Acne was a creative collective, encompassing art directors, copywriters and film directors. Tired of printing logos on tea mugs, Acne decided to make a handful of jeans with red seams and a kick-ass flame logo. The trousers took off and Acne Jeans as a clothing division was soon added to the company line-up. With their choice of name and the far from mainstream design, the black-clad ad guys in the office probably didn't see Acne as a serious business venture, but this was a time when irony sold truckloads of jeans...
But a slow start and many years of just jeans and t-shirts soon led Acne, headed up by Johnny Johansson since day one, to a bit of a fashion no-mans-land. There was only so far denim and a sense of humour could take you. Then, in the late Noughties, Johansson managed to find the right balance, mixing their denim roots, suave advertising aesthetic, Scandinavian sensibility and natural born sense of style. A new layer of artistic quality, great fabrics and a new way of of thinking in terms of cuts and shapes appeared. Acne as we know it today was born. Since then Acne's shows are a must-have for the best boutiques and their clothes staple pieces for customers not only craving irony but also style and substance. The flame-engulfed A logo in red might be long gone, but Acne is here to stay.