At ACNE spring/summer 2012 someone (like at oh so many a-fashion show) whispers that Anna Wintour might be coming. But for once this routine and quite frankly uninspired rumour falls dead on their neighbours’ ears, because everyone seems more focused on seeing the show. Or maybe it’s just because it’s the last show of the day, and the heady martinis served by the denimed chaps has put everyone into a soporific lull. Either way, everyone seems to be relatively more hushed than usual.

Whilst the thought of baseball caps and glitter might set alight the hearts of some with euphoria, you can be certain that for others it just doesn’t have that same effect. But of course, this is ACNE and they tend to have an uncanny knack for halting that twitch of the eyebrow before it becomes a fully fledged frown.

This collection is a little harsher than the gelato-parlour hued menswear collection. Everything is touch harsher, not to mention the mirror lined, concrete venue-New Oxford Street’s old sorting office. Jonny Johansson has cited Morocco as an inspiration. It doesn’t scream Marrakesh, but it doesn’t intend to, as with any good rendering, it hums. Only a slight puff is exuded here and there: tasselled loafers, terracotta, lapis lazuli. In certain looks the colours weren’t so much blocked as coned, wedged and umbrella-ed which lifts them out of that potential dreary realm of simplicity, into a much more desirable subtlety.

Whatever you think of the overall aesthetic, what can’t be denied is Johansson’s apt delivery of a concept, and whilst undeniably ACNE, the label has clearly shed any last remaining thoughts of it as ‘just a jeans company’.

Posted on September 26, 2011 at 7:05:18 by Shola Von Reynolds