Acne Studios
Overview
Acne Studios is a Stockholm fashion house that grew from ACNE, a multidisciplinary collective founded in 1996 by Jonny Johansson, Mats Johansson, Jesper Kouthoofd and Tomas Skoging. The original acronym stood for Associated Computer Nerd Enterprises; Ambition to Create Novel Expressions was adopted later as the fashion business moved towards international retail. In 1997, Johansson produced a small run of red-stitched raw denim jeans whose press attention gave the collective an unexpected route into clothing.
The fashion operation developed through the Acne Jeans period before becoming Acne Studios as the company concentrated its structure around ready-to-wear in the mid-2000s. Womenswear, menswear and denim were joined by footwear, bags, eyewear and other accessories, while Acne Paper, furniture, artist projects and distinctive retail interiors retained the collective’s wider cultural interests. The house entered London Fashion Week for Spring/Summer 2011 and established its womenswear presentation in Paris in 2013.
Jonny Johansson remains creative director and, with executive chair Mikael Schiller, retains majority control of the company. A minority investment by IDG Capital and I.T Group in 2018 supported further international expansion without displacing that control. Acne Studios now operates as a global contemporary-luxury house whose fashion, publications, spatial design and collaborations remain connected by a preference for deliberate friction: polished and damaged, functional and ornamental, familiar and awkward.
Philosophy
Acne Studios uses reduction as a starting point rather than a final aesthetic. Tailored coats, denim, knitwear and everyday separates are altered through dropped proportions, compressed or elongated volumes, uneven finishing and unexpected colour. Johansson has described the result as maximalist minimalism: a clean structure disturbed by texture, humour or an element that initially appears ungainly.
Material contrast carries much of the design argument. Raw or trompe-l’œil denim meets satin, leather, brushed knitwear, faux fur and technical surfaces; bourgeois checks and conventional tailoring are recut through the visual languages of punk, rave, workwear and Nordic folk dress. Gender is treated as a shifting set of styling and proportion choices rather than a fixed division between wardrobes.
The same method shapes the company’s image. Pale pink packaging, the neutral Face motif, Acne Paper, artist-built runway environments and stores designed with industrial and sculptural materials turn branding into a series of controlled contradictions. Collaborations are most effective when they alter how a collection, object or space is made, rather than functioning only as an exchange of logos.
Recent events
Disclaimer
Creative timeline
Button TextAcne Studios converted its former Palais Royal boutique into Acne Paper Palais Royal in 2025. The permanent gallery created a public programme for exhibitions, books, talks and new work by contributors associated with the publication.
Acne Studios entered fragrance in 2024 through Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle. Perfumer Suzy Le Helley developed a floral aldehydic scent that set clean-laundry effects against peach, vanilla and sandalwood.
Thomas Persson returned to direct the revived Acne Paper, adapting its thematic editorial method to a larger book format and later to an annual publication and gallery programme.
Acne Paper returned in 2021 in an expanded book format after a seven-year pause. The relaunch renewed the publication as a substantial cultural project rather than a seasonal brand supplement.
Acne Studios moved its global headquarters into Floragatan 13, a former Czechoslovak embassy in Stockholm. The preserved brutalist building and commissioned furniture made the workplace a permanent expression of the company’s architectural and cultural interests.
IDG Capital and I.T Group acquired a combined 41 per cent minority stake in Acne Studios in 2018. Jonny Johansson and Mikael Schiller retained a controlling majority, using the investment to support international growth without surrendering independent control.
The Face motif expanded into a permanent unisex collection on 17 August 2017. The neutral expression became a recognisable casual product system associated with the Swedish concept of lagom.
Acne Studios relaunched its denim offer as Blå Konst on 6 April 2017. Permanent fits and seasonal studies gave denim a dedicated structure described by Jonny Johansson as a free space parallel to the main collections.
Acne Studios introduced a complete eyewear collection in 2015, extending the accessory business through frames that used exaggerated scale, colour and simplified graphic construction.
The original run of Acne Paper ended in 2014 after fifteen issues. The pause closed the first phase of the publication without ending Acne Studios’ wider use of art, photography and print.
An invitation connected to the Palais Galliera enabled Acne Studios to present its womenswear in Paris in 2013. The calendar move established the house within the city’s international runway system while retaining its Stockholm base.
Acne Studios opened its first United Kingdom store on Dover Street in 2010. The retail expansion accompanied the house’s first London Fashion Week presentation and made London its first major runway stage outside Sweden.
Yolanda Zobel joined Acne Studios in 2008 as a freelance designer for the womenswear pre-collections. In 2011 she became design director and head of womenswear, remaining with the Stockholm house until 2013. Her tenure overlapped with Acne Studios’ London Fashion Week debut and its establishment on the Paris women’s calendar.
The fashion operation separated from the wider ACNE company network and consolidated its identity as Acne Studios. The restructuring concentrated ownership, investment and international growth around fashion while retaining Acne Paper and other cultural projects.
Thomas Persson established the editorial and visual direction of Acne Paper, commissioning long-form cultural issues rather than a conventional brand magazine. His first tenure ended when the original publication paused in 2014.
Acne Studios launched Acne Paper as a thematic cultural publication spanning photography, art, literature, history and fashion. Its editorial distance from seasonal product advertising became a defining part of the house’s multidisciplinary identity.
Mikael Schiller joined the wider ACNE business during an early financial crisis and helped restructure its debt, financing and ownership. He became Jonny Johansson’s principal business partner and remains executive chair and co-owner.
The response to Acne’s first small denim project gave the collective a viable fashion business and led to the Acne Jeans phase. The structural change established clothing as the activity that would later become Acne Studios.
Tomas Skoging co-founded ACNE in 1996 and helped establish its film and moving-image practice. His relationship belongs to the original collective rather than the continuing authorship of Acne Studios collections.
Jesper Kouthoofd co-founded ACNE in 1996, contributing to its graphic, digital and technology-oriented culture. He left the fashion company’s development as his work moved towards projects including Teenage Engineering.
Mats Johansson co-founded the original ACNE collective in 1996 and contributed to its early multidisciplinary company structure. Public evidence does not support the previous description of him as Acne Studios’ continuing chairman.
Jonny Johansson co-founded ACNE in 1996 and developed its experimental fashion activity into Acne Studios. He remains the house’s creative director and principal design author.
Jonny Johansson, Mats Johansson, Jesper Kouthoofd and Tomas Skoging founded ACNE in Stockholm in 1996 as a multidisciplinary company spanning advertising, film, graphic design, digital projects and fashion. The original name meant Associated Computer Nerd Enterprises.
Acne Studios divisions and related structures
The house combines seasonal fashion with permanent product programmes, publishing and cultural spaces that extend the original collective model.
Fashion and product
- Womenswear
- mainline ready-to-wear
- Presented in Paris, the women’s collections develop Johansson’s experiments with distorted tailoring, denim, knitwear, evening fabrics and shifting gender codes.
- Menswear
- mainline ready-to-wear
- Menswear combines workwear and tailoring with subcultural references, material experiments and collaborations that have included artists, craft companies and generative technology.
- Denim and Blå Konst
- permanent denim study
- Denim has remained central since the 1997 project. Blå Konst, launched in 2017, reorganised the category around permanent fits and seasonal studies described as a parallel space for denim experimentation.
- Bags, footwear and eyewear
- accessories
- Leather goods, shoes and optical frames translate the house’s interest in knots, stretched proportions, distressed surfaces and deliberately unconventional shapes into recurring product families.
- Face collection
- unisex permanent capsule
- The expressionless Face motif expanded into a permanent unisex programme in 2017, using elevated basics and accessories to explore the Swedish idea of lagom, or emotional and visual restraint.
Publishing and cultural spaces
- Acne Paper
- cultural publication
- Founded in the mid-2000s under editor Thomas Persson, Acne Paper commissions photography, art, history and literature without operating as a seasonal product catalogue. It returned in 2021 after a seven-year pause.
- Acne Paper Palais Royal
- gallery, Paris
- Opened in 2025 in the brand’s former Palais Royal boutique, the permanent gallery gives Acne Paper contributors and invited artists a physical programme of exhibitions, talks and publications.
- Retail and interiors
- spatial design
- Stores, showrooms and the Floragatan 13 headquarters use architecture, commissioned furniture and artworks to set raw industrial materials against exact, often highly finished interventions.
- Fragrance
- from 2024
- The first Acne Studios fragrance was developed with Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle and perfumer Suzy Le Helley, extending the house’s dirty-and-clean material language into scent.
Acne Studios collaborations
Acne Studios uses collaborations to bring fashion into contact with art, photography, craft, publishing, fragrance and product design.
Fashion houses and heritage makers
- Lanvin
- fashion collaboration, 2008
- An early exchange between the Stockholm label and the Paris house placed denim and contemporary sportswear inside a luxury collaboration format.
- Fjällräven
- outdoor capsule, 2018
- The Swedish partnership enlarged and reworked functional pieces including the Kånken backpack and Expedition jacket through Acne Studios proportions and colour.
- Mulberry
- leather goods, 2019
- The two houses combined Mulberry’s bags and Scotchgrain with Acne Studios knots, enlarged hardware and hybrid constructions.
- Kero
- footwear, 2022
- A footwear capsule revisited the Swedish maker’s traditional beak-shaped shoes through slip-on and knee-high forms produced with naturally tanned leather.
Artists, image and technology
- Lord Snowdon
- book, exhibition and shirts, 2012
- Snowdon Blue combined an archive of photographic portraits with a publication, travelling exhibition and a capsule of blue shirts.
- Hilma af Klint Foundation
- art capsule, 2014
- Paintings by Hilma af Klint were reproduced across garments and accessories, bringing the Swedish artist’s abstract visual system into a limited fashion project.
- Grant Levy-Lucero
- artist capsules, 2019 and 2021
- Levy-Lucero’s ceramic practice and references to Californian commercial signage became text and image treatments across casual clothing and accessories.
- Robbie Barrat
- generative design, 2020
- Barrat trained a generative adversarial network on the Acne Studios archive; the menswear team translated its distortions and errors into the Autumn/Winter 2020 collection.
- Per B. Sundberg
- prints and jewellery, 2023
- The Swedish ceramic artist’s imagery and material sensibility shaped prints and jewellery within the Men’s Spring/Summer 2024 collection.
- Villu Jaanisoo
- runway installation, 2024
- Jaanisoo’s tyre sculptures formed the environment for Autumn/Winter 2024, extending the collection’s conflict between industrial toughness and ornamental surface.
- Jonathan Lyndon Chase
- set and capsule, 2024–2025
- Chase created a domestic installation for Spring/Summer 2025 and later expanded the relationship into clothing and exhibition work concerned with intimacy, Black subjectivity and queer domestic space.
Fragrance and spatial design
- Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle
- fragrance, 2024
- Frédéric Malle and perfumer Suzy Le Helley developed the first Acne Studios scent as a floral aldehydic composition balancing clean-laundry effects with peach, vanilla and sandalwood.
- Halleroed
- stores and headquarters
- The Stockholm design studio has shaped retail and office spaces through stainless steel, concrete, historic fabric and commissioned furniture.
- Max Lamb
- furniture and interiors
- Lamb’s furniture has appeared in stores and headquarters, giving the brand’s spatial identity a sculptural counterpoint to its industrial surfaces.
