Acne Studios

What Is Acne Studios?

If you have spent any time around fashion circles, you have probably heard the name thrown around. Acne Studios is a fashion house out of Stockholm, and it deals in pretty much everything you would expect from a brand at that level - men's and women's clothing, shoes, denim, bags, scarves, eyewear, the works. What you might not expect is how much of a creative operation it really is. This is a brand that has always had one foot in the art world. Photography, architecture, publishing - Jonny Johansson, the guy behind it all, pulls from everywhere, and you can feel that when you walk into one of their stores. They look nothing like normal retail spaces.

People like Charli XCX, Willow Smith, Kendall Jenner, Selena Gomez, and Zayn Malik have all been photographed in Acne Studios or appeared in the brand's campaigns. And honestly, that makes sense. The brand speaks to a certain kind of person - someone who puts thought into what they wear but would rather die than look like they are showing off. You know the type. The face logo beanies, the oversized wool coats, the perfectly washed denim - it all carries that same energy. Cool, understated, a little strange in the best way.

Who Owns Acne Studios?

Here is something that might surprise you: Acne Studios has not been gobbled up by one of the big luxury conglomerates. It is still privately held. Jonny Johansson, who co-founded the brand and still runs the creative side, and Mikael Schiller, the executive chairman, hold the majority of the shares between them. In an era where every interesting independent label seems to end up under the LVMH or Kering umbrella, these two have held on tight. They run the brand on their terms, and that independence shows up in the work.

Now, they did bring in some outside money back in late 2018. IDG Capital, which is an investment firm, grabbed about 30 percent of the company. A Hong Kong retail group called I.T Group picked up roughly 11 percent. So outside investors hold around 41 percent total. But the founders never gave up control. Schiller was pretty open about it at the time  he said it was exactly the kind of deal they wanted. More resources for growth, especially in Asia, but nobody telling them what to design or how to run their business. That balance has held ever since.

When Was Acne Studios Founded?

The brand goes back to 1996, but the story does not start with fashion at all. ACNE was originally a creative collective in Stockholm, a group of people doing graphic design, making films, running ad campaigns, building digital stuff. Clothing was just one piece of a much bigger puzzle. Things changed in 1997 when Jonny Johansson made a hundred pairs of raw denim jeans, stitched them up with red thread, and handed them out to people he knew. He was not trying to launch a fashion empire. He just made some jeans. But acne studios jeans ended up in Wallpaper magazine and Vogue Paris, and suddenly there was real demand for more.

Fast forward to 2006, and the fashion arm had gotten big enough that it needed to stand on its own. The collective split apart Acne Film went one way, Acne Advertising went another, and Acne Studios became its own standalone company with its own website and e-commerce setup. After that, things moved fast. Stores started opening in major cities across the world. Paris, London, New York, LA, Tokyo, Beijing - the brand went global. Last reported revenues put them somewhere above 250 million euros a year, which is a long way from a hundred pairs of jeans given away for free.

Why Is It Called Acne Studios?

Yeah, the name is a lot to get past. Nobody picks up a four-hundred-dollar sweater and wants to think about breakouts. But the name has zero connection to skin problems. Back when the collective started in the mid-nineties, ACNE stood for Associated Computer Nerd Enterprises. It was a joke, basically a bunch of design geeks poking fun at themselves. Nobody thought it would end up on the front of a global fashion brand, but life is strange that way.

Once fashion took over and the collective dissolved, someone had the good sense to give the acronym a second life. So ACNE got rebranded as Ambition to Create Novel Expressions which, fair enough, sounds like something you would actually print on a mood board in a design studio. The "Studios" part came along to hammer home that this was bigger than clothes. Art, furniture, magazines, exhibitions all of it lived under the same roof. And look, the name should not work for a luxury brand. It really should not. But that is exactly why it does. Every other fashion house is named after some French founder or Italian city. Acne Studios just sat there with this absurd name and dared people to take it seriously. Thirty years later, nobody is laughing.

Is Acne Studios a Luxury Brand?

Without question, yes. But do not picture old-money Paris luxury when you hear that  no monogrammed everything, no heritage dating back to the 1800s. Acne Studios plays in the same arena as Maison Margiela, Loewe, and Jacquemus. People in fashion call this tier contemporary luxury, and what earns the label is pretty straightforward. The brand creates its own fabrics instead of buying whatever is available. A jacket from three seasons ago still looks and feels solid. And every single item goes through a design process that you can actually see in the finished product. That is what your money goes toward not a name stitched into the collar, but the actual work behind the garment.

Where does the brand sit in terms of prestige? Well, it holds a spot on the Paris Fashion Week calendar. Twice a year. Not Milan, not Copenhagen, not some online-only showcase Paris, the one that matters most. Their stores sit on high-rent streets in London, New York, and Tokyo. Campaign shoots involve real artists, not stock photographers. So no, they are not pretending to be luxury or borrowing someone else's credibility. They earned the seat. The thing that makes Acne Studios different from a lot of brands at this level, though, is how little noise they make about it. No giant logos, no flashy monograms. People who know, know. And the ones who do not? The brand is perfectly fine with that.

Why Is Acne Studios So Expensive?

Start with the fabric. Most brands go to a textile supplier, pick from what is available, and call it a day. Acne Studios does not do that. They develop a lot of their materials from scratch or work with specialized mills to create custom weaves and finishes. The denim alone goes through a development cycle that would make a fast-fashion brand's head spin. Same goes for the knitwear, the outerwear, the tailored stuff - none of it comes off a shelf. And most of the actual manufacturing happens in places like Italy and Portugal, where the workers are skilled, the standards are strict, and the costs reflect all of that.

Then you have to factor in everything else that goes into running a brand like this. Every collection starts in Stockholm with Jonny Johansson pulling from art exhibitions and architecture and whatever else catches his eye that season. There are rounds of prototyping, sampling, adjustments. A single hoodie will go through revision after revision before it ever touches a shelf  more reworking than some brands do across their whole seasonal drop. On top of all that, there are rent bills on storefronts in some of the most expensive cities on earth, runway production costs in Paris, and photographer fees for campaigns that look like they belong in a gallery. All of that gets folded into the price of whatever you are buying. So yes, that acne studios scarf costs a lot. But there is a reason it costs a lot, and it goes way deeper than the fabric.

Acne Studios Collections

The schedule is simple two main drops per year for both men and women, Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter, shown during Paris Fashion Week. What Johansson does with those drops, though, is never simple. He has this thing where he wants runway clothes to feel like something a real person would actually throw on, and that push and pull between fantasy and function defines every season he puts out. Fall/Winter 2025 on the men's side was a good example. Suits and tailored coats showed up, but they looked slept-in, a little rough around the edges, like someone grabbed a beautiful blazer and then deliberately messed it up. Spring/Summer 2026 went even further  the women's show happened inside the Collège des Bernardins in Paris and mixed up masculine and feminine silhouettes until you could not really tell where one ended and the other began. The men's collection that same season? Full cowboy mode. Denim jackets, bootcut jeans, latex-coated washes, santiag boots  the whole ranch fantasy filtered through a Swedish lens.

Outside of the runway stuff, the everyday commercial range is where a lot of people first encounter the brand. Denim is still the backbone they offer everything from skinny cuts to wide relaxed fits, all with washes and treatments you will not find at your average jeans store. The face-patch beanies and scarves have taken on a life of their own and are probably the most recognizable Acne Studios items out there right now. Outerwear is always strong, whether it is a leather biker jacket or a big wool coat. Collaborations pop up regularly too, and they tend to be genuinely interesting rather than just logo-swapping exercises. The Timberland one got people talking they took the classic six-inch boot and blew it up into this oversized, slightly distorted thing that debuted on a Paris runway. Before that, there was a Lanvin partnership that turned heads. The brand picks its collaborators carefully, and so far none of these projects have felt like cash grabs or compromises.

How Does Acne Studios Fit?

Here is the honest truth there is no single answer to this question, and that is what makes shopping for Acne Studios a little different. Most brands, once you figure out your size, you can buy pretty much anything and know what you are getting. Acne Studios does not work that way. Each piece is designed with its own shape in mind. Acne Studios hoodies and sweatshirts tend to be cut loose and roomy a medium gives you more fabric through the body and longer arms than you would get from most other brands in the same size. Trousers and blazers, on the other hand, sit much closer to the body and feel more structured. Denim is all over the place in the best way  slim, straight, wide, relaxed  and each one fits completely differently from the next.

Sizing follows European standards, so if you are used to shopping in US or UK sizes, you will want to look at a chart before you pull the trigger on anything. Women's pieces tend to follow Italian and French sizing conventions, with XXS sitting at about a US 0 or EU 32. The brand actually does a decent job of labeling things  if it says classic fit, relaxed fit, oversized, or slim, you can trust that label. It is worth paying attention to those descriptions, because they will save you from a lot of returns.

Does Acne Studios Run Big?

It depends on what you are buying, and that is the annoying but truthful answer. Hoodies, sweatshirts, denim jackets, and most outerwear yes, these will feel bigger than what you are used to from other brands. A medium hoodie could easily work on someone who normally grabs a large elsewhere. But nobody at Acne Studios made a mistake with the measurements. That generous, slightly oversized shape is the whole point. Scandinavian design loves drape and movement, and the brand leans into that hard. Clothes that skim and float rather than grip and cling.

Go to the other end of the range, though, and the story flips. Slim-cut jeans, tailored trousers, and structured jackets tend to fit true or even a touch snug. So if you are picking up Acne Studios for the first time, here is what works  go down a size for anything labeled oversized or relaxed, and stick with your normal size for fitted or tailored stuff. Better yet, grab a tape measure, check yourself against the brand's own size chart, and stop assuming that your usual size in Zara or Nike or wherever else you shop is going to mean the same thing here. With this brand, the fit changes depending on the garment, and once you accept that, shopping gets a lot easier.