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 show was a 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.
