Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Acne
If it’s de rigueur this spring clash prints and textures, look no further than Acne’s latest capsule collection with Liberty of London. For spring, the Swedish house has collaborated with the 140-year-old makers of busily sweet prints, applying them to its own leather items — biker jackets, jumpsuits, skirts, shoes, sunglasses — to delightfully jarring effect.
“When we started exploring Liberty’s extensive heritage for this project, it almost felt like an overwhelming voyage,” says Acne’s creative director Jonny Johansson. “We realized we had to come up with a strong contrast in order to make sense of it, so the team and I picked one favorite print each and integrated them with some of our classic leather pieces.”
Coincidentally, one of those favorite prints is the Jonny, a paisley pattern made at Liberty’s Merton printworks between the 1890s and the 1910s. Another, Eva, is a Japanese-inspired art fabric originally used for furnishings in the 1880s. Alma, meanwhile, is another art fabric from around 1890, a mix of Japanese design and early art nouveau.
At Liberty of London, Acne Studios stores and soon at acnestudios.com