First Look: The Lived-In Summer Cool of Acne Studios
Last season, Acne Studios founder Jonny Johansson explored his newfound fascination with looksmaxxing, the very online beauty "trend" where men seek perfection by making their jawlines unthinkably chiseled and their eyes as piercing as possible.
For Spring/Summer 2026, Johansson proposing an alternative. Something better than perfection.
“We keep exploring and rebuilding the emblematic codes of the menswear wardrobe. This time, it’s with a geeky, quietly confident attitude that beats perfection by far,” said Johansson. “Our character is cool and unbothered — that’s where his charisma comes from.”
Johansson’s Acne Studios has become a Swedish fashion powerhouse by reformatting everyday apparel with a trend-savvy but evergreen approach. It began with Italian-made jeans (a product category where it continues to push the envelope), and has evolved to also include luxury-fied football jerseys and oversized fuzzy scarves.
SS26 is yet another deft investigation into how the ordinary can be twisted and uplifted.
As always, Acne offers some overt displays of experimentation. A simple brown suede, bowling-style bag is littered with a bevy of silver-colored studs, while a denim two-piece is similarly covered in silver-hued interventions, this time made to look like duct tape.
Faded sweatshirts, paint-splattered jeans, and worn-out-looking leather shoes all give the impression that they have lived a life, none more so than a suede backpack with its discolored body and a fading handprint imprinted onto one of the pockets.
Certainly, these clothes are in opposition to perfection. At least, in the conventional sense.
The same can be said for the majority of Acne Studios’ SS26 collection: the shrunken T-shirts, the elongated shirts, the checkered two-piece in a crinkly, paper-like fabric. Though they are rooted in the realm of reality, their eccentricities are what make them.
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