There’s nothing like a campaign with Kylie Jenner to light a fire under your brand.
Just ask Jonny Johansson. Backstage at his spring show, the creative director of Acne Studios marveled at the crowds that had gathered outside to watch the arrival of guests including Jenner as well as Rosalía, Taraji P. Henson and K-pop stars Big Matthew and Giselle from girl band Aespa.
He credited the Acne campaign unveiled a month earlier, which featured the cosmetics mogul and reality star modeling the brand’s dirty denim collection while covered in mud. “I wanted to shoot the biggest pop icon of the moment,” he said. “She’s a sign of the times. She’s what everybody’s talking about.”
Just then, the curtain parted and Jenner, wearing a figure-hugging red dress and futuristic oversized sunglasses, popped in to pay her respects. “I’m excited,” she said. “It looks beautiful.”
With 399 million followers online, she may be used to breaking the internet, but for Johansson, watching the campaign go viral was a new experience. “I was super scared when all the comments came rolling in, but I was also happy that people engaged,” he recalled.
It’s a denim moment for the Swedish label, which was born in 1997 when Johansson made 100 pairs of jeans and gave them away to friends and family. He used to cringe when people described him as a denim designer. Now he embraces it.
“I’m old enough to know that it is what it is,” he said. ”Denim is a spirit or it’s an attitude. I am a denim person, I weirdly like to think. I’m a bit rough, I have a bit of a music background.”
His spring lineup was inspired by construction-site textures: denim and knitwear were caked in white plaster, while pockets and belt loops were molded onto the surface of rubbery leather coats.
The collection felt more streamlined this season, with items that provided easy entry into the Acne-verse, such as a ribbed white tank top tufted with ostrich feathers, or a gray hoodie dress with a stiff undulating hem. In a more recognizable style, T-shirts were flipped upside down and gathered into skirts, or twisted and tucked into bras worn on top.
As much as Johansson is flirting with the popular girl, his real crowd are the outsiders: the creatives like British artist Katerina Jebb, whose scanned images of tights and false eyelashes he printed on wispy slips, and electronic duo Giant Swan, whose thumping soundtrack propelled the models down the runway at warp speed. Only now they’re saying: “You can sit with us.”
