Acne: 10 things you need to know about the hot fashion brand

The name
Until 1996, the word "acne" was not very fashionable. Since acne - this really is the ambition to create novel expressions - began, but the label is no different than common skin condition known clearly announced. Jonny Johansson, one of the founders and now global creative director, said he liked the idea of ​​"possession of a difficult" word and make it cool. Playful with us, basically. But now Johansson, a gentle soul carries a MA1 flight jacket and Acne jeans is a little embarrassed. "I wish we had not mentioned it," he said. "People said it was a weird name, and I agree with them." Official title is now the brand Acne Studios.

Jeans
For acne began with four guys and a lot of idealism, they had the equivalent of writer's block. "If you make a modern brand, where do you start?" Johansson said. Jeans have worked because they were symbolic: "You might as well try to make Coca-Cola or do you go about it the wrong way" The first designs were simple, straight legs with distinctive red stitching you made 100 .. Couples and gave them "The Creative Children" in Stockholm. Soon Editorials Wallpaper * and French Vogue upturned. In the early noughties years acne has officially blipped on the radar of fashion.

The city
Before acne, the idea of ​​style Stockholm was probably more in the world of interior design and fashion. The brand - the most notable international level Sweden fashion brand H & M Bar - exports the eyes of his hometown layers, details of sportswear, prints and much black in the world would be almost £ 78m in the process in the last year. "If you're from Sweden, you grew up with Swedish design - it's in your DNA functionality," says Johansson. "We are often mistaken for minimalist, but we are very colorful nature and love."

Stores
You might think a brand like Acne hippie open in central London, Dalston. But if you are sensing a theme here, it's too obvious. Instead, the new branch is to open next month on Pelham Street in Brompton Cross - on the territory of yummy mummies that mom jeans. This predilection for the peripheral regions is played worldwide. His first shop in Paris is a converted garage that Schiller is "hard to find", while the flagship Stockholm admits in the old bank where the hostages were taken in 1973 and is the Stockholm Syndrome expression invented.

The Studio
If you need for a point of envy in the workplace to ensure studio famous fashion acne. A converted bank, the 16th Century comes, it has a new Frieze Art, labyrinthine rooms and a shared kitchen with birch benches, Barbara Hepworth sculpture and a work style of carved green marble. And that's not even mentioning the people of this utopia style. A team on the day includes lunch, visits Guardian girl with purple hair, handsome men in the modernist glass and Hamish Bowles of American Vogue.

Pink
Acne like nothing better than to do something a little wrong with the height of cool. See her pink brand that covers all her shopping bags, merchandising and stationery. "I told Johnny that was evident bags", says Mikael Schiller, executive president of the brand, a typical acne has crumpled along with classic brogues mac. "He went full on. Butch now see these guys walking around with pink bags."

The gun boat
You know, these boots with the heel and chunky zips? You can thank them for acne. Your version, launch, which goes for about £ 380, was copied from the high street shops around the world and has been selling brand. Conceived as "a mix of cowboy and motorcycle riding boots," says Johansson, he believes that his success is due to the old boring practice. "It is high time, in the wrong places - Scandinavia, Great Britain," he said. "The girls in London Sandals run in the middle of winter, so if you offer a rough and cool design, it is a success."

Collaborations
Get Acne - a brand associated with a model-off-duty style and let the long-legged people in general - that he would love to work with you and expect it edgy about a new label tell you never heard of. Wrong. "Rolex" says Johansson. This kind of fresh annoyance is the key to acne. So far, the brand with Snowdon, the 83-year-old British photographer, Candy, the Spanish magazine for transvestites and Lanvin has worked. "What unites them all is a form of humor," says Johansson. "Do you have a quirkiness to them."

Chairs
Prior to his work in fashion, Johansson played with furniture. He showed he still the gift of a furniture brand in 2010 published -. "To find the heritage of Swedish design" to, he said he was referring. Nya Berlin sofa by Carl Malmsten made in the 20s for the Swedish Embassy in the German capital in the style typical acne, but they are wrong with it: Put the drawings in Illustrator and the result is a stretching. Hybrid: long and slender perfect furniture for fashion people.

Fans
Acne no more than 10% of the court wearing fashionable clothes, they do anyway. Celebrities like Rihanna, Alexa Chung and first true Yasmin Sewell would regularly photographed also something that many other brands for kill - or at least to pay through the nose. This is not how acne. "We have never paid anyone and we do not want," says Johansson. "That does not mean that we do not like celebrities wearing our clothes, but this strategy is cold and hard and long. Our brand is the product. If you start from there, everything else will fall into place."