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 by Black 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 call laskad. 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.
