Jonny Johansson elected to ship out on a truncated but still transformative Grand Tour as he shaped this menswear collection, traveling to Venice late last October. Of course the Swede swung south for the art, the architecture, and the Thomas Mann vibes, however he said his chief objective “was to explore the psychology of how you change your look when you travel, how you are inspired to dress differently in order to shape a different alter ego.”
That experience-fueled consideration served to turbo-charge Johansson’s customary eclecticism to new heights. The central route of this worn itinerary was directed around his personal obsession with denim, a fabric that wears its use, experience, and movement like a diary. The designer created raw undyed denim jeans that were printed with a collaged patchwork of his own vintage pieces, creating a sort of meta-vintage melange. These would have looked good with a similarly collaged soft pink and black check button-up shirt. Elsewhere a jacquard weave monogram on pale denim acted as a kind of branded worn postcard.
One highlight of this seasonal Acne trip was a series of items created with the Swedish ceramic artist Per B. Sundberg. These included Mars Attacks!–reminiscent death’s head curios and unsettling prints of cutesy animals and distorted wraith-like figures on garments that were treated to have a glassy finish, as if the images were entombed in glass. The designer said visiting the famous glass blowers of Murano had fired the idea for these.
Pink but grungy velour pants (certainly not Barbiecore), studded garment dyed dungarees, swimwear with sexually competitive messaging, leather wrap skirts, footprint-print knits, and the house soccer shirt were also present in Johansson’s suitcase. A deep purple flared-collar, shirred-waist doublet—quite New Romantic—was his concession to dressing local. This was an Acne collection whose rails were a pleasure to travel through.
