Red room, green room, pink room, yellow room, guests at Acne Studios were each assigned a colour. Divided into a series of enfilades awash with hues which punctuated the collection, every room of Collège des Bernardins was carpeted in a corresponding colour while the sound of Portishead blasted through the speakers. Celebrating the brand’s 30th anniversary, Jonny Johansson looked back on his personal obsessions from over the years, which have gone on to define the codes now synonymous with the Swedish House. “Ahead of this show, I was thinking back to 2010, when we made a runway through Lord Snowdon’s apartment in Kensington Palace; it felt disruptive and captured a mood… heritage represents all of us, and we carry this forward,” said the designer. 

Trawling through the archives to find key pieces and silhouettes which felt distinctly Acne, while allowing the designer to experiment with modern sensibility, saw iconic garments from the house reimagined. Supple leather biker and aviator jackets were cut and cropped to the waist or padded at the shoulder, while suiting was low-slung on the hip and tailored to a free-flowing silhouette. The 1996 denim cut, which is arguably one of the house’s most instantly recognisable outputs, made its return to the runway in an array of washes. For FW26, preppiness was high on Johansson’s agenda. Kitsch knitwear sets walked alongside box pleat tartan skirts, and high-waisted tapered trousers were paired with a traditional loafer or brogue. Tying things together, the work of Paul Kooiker featured across elongated silk scarves, taken from a portrait series of art school students, presented at Acne Paper Palais Royal last year.