Jonny Johansson | ACNE – Ambition to Create Novel Expression

Jonny Johansson is the creative director and co-founder of Acne Studios, the Stockholm-based multidisciplinary fashion house. Acne Studios is a multidisciplinary luxury fashion house based in Stockholm, Sweden with own-brand retail stores in locations around the world.  It was founded in 1996 as part of the creative collective ACNE. The fashion house offers men’s and women’s ready-to-wear fashion, footwear, accessories and denim, as well as special artistic collaborations and one-off projects.

Johansson grew up in the north of Sweden and was originally a guitarist in several rock bands in his youth.

Johansson has stated that the early inspiration for Acne Studios came from the Warhol Factory.  Johansson is heavily influenced by art, design, literature and music and over the years he has collaborated with a diverse range of artists, photographers and designers such as Lanvin, Lord Snowdon and transsexual magazine Candy.  His characteristic style is an emphasis on tailoring and the use of eclectic materials and custom fabrics.

Acne Studios design men’s and women’s ready-to-wear fashion, footwear, accessories and denim.

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In 1996, Johansson and three colleagues founded the ACNE creative collective. ACNE stands for Ambition to Create Novel Expression, but Johansson has also expressed that he liked the idea of ‘appropriating a difficult word’ and making it cool.  In 1997, the Acne Studios fashion line was born when Johansson created 100 pairs of raw denim jeans with red stitching and gave them away to friends and family.

 The main women’s Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter collections are presented twice a year at Paris Fashion Week. The women’s Resort and Pre-Fall collections are presented in New York and men’s main collections are presented twice a year in Paris.  Acne Studios was founded in 1996 in Stockholm, Sweden as part of the creative collective ACNE that focused on graphic design, film, production and advertising.  The name ACNE stands for “Ambition to Create Novel Expressions”. In 1997, cofounder Jonny Johansson created one hundred pairs of raw denim jeans with red stitching and gave them away to friends and family. Wallpaper and Vogue Paris quickly picked up on the popularity of the jeans and Acne Studios rapidly expanded their fashion offering outside of denim.

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In 2006, Acne Studios became a standalone company and separated from Acne Film, Acne Advertising and Acne Digital, at the same time launching their ecommerce website acnestudios.com. Since launch, Acne Studios has grown into a global fashion house with retail stores around the world including Paris, London, New York,Los Angeles, Antwerp and Tokyo, offering women’s and men’s ready-to-wear collections, showing at Paris Fashion Week twice a year and turning over $120 million annually in 2013.

According to the Acne Studios environmental strategy the company wants to produce wares that are high quality and that has long life. Their goal in 2012 was to increase the amount of environmentally preferable materials and adds that their goal for 2014 is that 20 percent of all fabrics used in their “never-out-of-stock” products should be made of organic cotton or some similar environmentally stable material.