‘You Need to Sacrifice a Lot to Be Good': Acne Studios's Jonny Johansson on the Power of Control

Vogue

4 days ago

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'My advice to people who want to have companies that do what we do is this: control is the only thing that is crucial.' Jonny Johansson, founder and creative director of Acne Studios, is speaking before tomorrow's showroom presentation for its Spring/Summer 2026 menswear collection. That collection will be the first manifestation in product of Acne's 30th-anniversary year: in a very different form to its current incarnation, the brand was created back in 1996, when Johansson was just 25.
The anniversary is not yet front of mind for Johansson. For now, he's engaged with more imminent demands on his creative control of a company that in 2024 estimated its revenues at between €300 million and €350 million. As well as the new collection, this Paris menswear week will see Acne Studios open a 'sort of gallery' in the Palais Royal space that became its first-ever Paris store back in 2008.
Acne Studios menswear SS26. That collection will be the first manifestation in product of Acne's 30th-anniversary year.
Photo: Courtesy of Acne Studios
The gallery will be a conceptual extension of Acne Paper, the well-regarded biannual magazine the brand founded in 2004 under the editorship of Thomas Persson. The title, in print until 2014, was revived in 2021 as a book, and has since returned to annual publication. Says Johansson of the new space: 'It's a place for the collaborators of Acne Paper to show themselves, and maybe start some new creative adventures. They should think about it as a new kind of blank page, with no gallery pressure.'
Palais Royal closed as a store a few months ago in order to make room for the new gallery. Its operations have been folded into those of Acne Studios's two more recently opened Paris stores: one on Rue Saint-Honoré, the other on Rue Froissart in Le Marais. But Palais Royal remains an emblematic address for the brand.