Jonny Johansson is the winner of this menswear’s Finest Inspiration award. Why? Because the oversize silhouettes at this morning’s Acne Studios presentation were, he said, inspired by “Keanu Reeves’s swollen face.” Don’t fret, Keanu; Johansson meant that in a good way—swollen with beauty in your youthful pomp. This was just one delight in a presentation fairly brimming with them. While we sat in the lecture hall of a beautiful old medical school, a French professor ran through a slideshow of self-portraits in art history, from Rembrandt to Otto Dix to Kafka—and occasionally made provocative assertions about the selfie generation in an accent so melted gruyère it was impossible to entirely discern.
Johansson, who was situated at the back of the class, said he’d been thinking about business tropes of ’80s menswear and the masculine urge to fetishize detail—so geekiness basically. The result was a collection walked by its models onto a tiled table that was presumably once used as a slab for cadavers under study by aspiring French doctors. It consisted of some almost parodic ensembles of ’80s formal tribes subjected to the swollen-Keanu treatment. The first look was a gray pinstripe peak lapelled jacket ballooned by the neoprene within, to excessive proportions, worn over incongruously skinny pants and wedge sneakers whose pastel paneling complemented the teal body of the white collared shirt above. A pink cashmere sweater under a mint high-necked fine gauge knit above some wide but tapering blue pants, held fast by a felted belt-suspender combo, looked very back-then Giorgio Armani. The embroidered hounds on a pale green knitted zipped shirt with an oversize collar were an Acne Studios-fied take on Brooks Brothers prep. And the swollen camel coat over another camel coat and camel zip-up looked like a loving but irreverent re-rendering of Max Mara, perhaps the greatest brand in all of fashion that should make menswear and doesn’t.
There is no belittling meant in mentioning these other designers, by the way: Johansson was riffing on a decade whose style they were fundamental in shaping; seeing them here so clearly just meant he was getting it right.
