When it comes to his part in the fashion playground, Jonny Johansson said this afternoon that he always feels like a double outsider: “Because we’re from Stockholm, which is from way outside [the fashion world], plus I’m from the very north of Sweden, which is way outside even Stockholm.” For this Acne Studios collection, Johansson harnessed the advantage that provenance from the periphery affords: fresh perspective.

Here, he worked to mash together many disparate elements into a newly coalesced menswear proposition. Farming has been a pretty rare reference at the shows, but it was present today in tractor-soled, half-length rubber work boots reimagined in leather; a flecked pale work jacket with a strapped satin utility pouch; and cow-print trenchcoats. He touched on late-mid-century bohemia and counterculture in the psychedelic swirl vests; superlong snoods with even longer fringing; and the colored snake-effect trenches, shirt-jackets, and moto pants. Shirts worn above high-waisted leather pants with carpenter’s pockets were semi-sheer and patterned with distressed chevrons in Lurex that Johansson had drawn from vintage soccer jerseys; these sometimes resembled Arsenal’s immortal “bruised banana” stripe of the 1990s.

There was stretch suiting in textured jersey, some nice long coats in soft velvet in hard colors (the pale, pale pistachio looked especially strong), fitted pants and tightly darted shorts in top-to-toe finely lined brown with lavender topstitching, and super-oversize work shirting. Pants featured vibrantly lined pockets that could be worn open on the hip, as they were in this show, but were also built to function when fastened at one side by hook and eye to the waistband. Accessories included rugged fanny packs and necklaces hanging with hollowed silver globes, partially sliced, whose insides were colored to complement the garments they were worn with. Whatever he says, Johansson these days is as inside as it gets in fashion; that outsider eye, however, remains.

Source: Luke Leitch/VogueRunway

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