Furniture By Acne

Creative director and cofounder of Acne, Jonny Johansson is a musician who seems to make everything under the sun � from jeans to furniture.

Jonny Johansson is one of four partners who set up the Swedish firm Acne in 1996. The company�s dual ambition was to work as a design and communication consultancy and to launch Acne-brand products. From the very beginning, Acne was active in fields as varied as fashion, advertising and film. To date, the most popular Acne product has been the label�s skinny jeans. The company�s most recent move focuses on a new line of furniture.

Why has Acne added furniture to its operation?
Johansson: Why not? Furniture has always been my world. Even when we started designing jeans, I looked at furniture for inspiration. The Salone del Mobile has been on my agenda for years. Now just seemed like a good time to make a line of furniture � and when we get interested in something, we follow up.

What�s the concept behind this furniture collection?
Acne is a Swedish company and we wanted to emphasize our origins. A furniture icon from my childhood was Carl Malmsten�s New Berlin sofa. I liked the notion of paying tribute to that design. We fed the forms for this design into the computer and went to work. Our original results were way over the top. So I reduced the amount of distortion until I had a number of functional objects.

I do see a link between this furniture and Acne�s most well-known product.
Indeed, the furniture is wrapped in denim from top to toe. Denim is our heritage, and I thought it would be super interesting to treat the upholstery in the same way we approach our jeans � by washing, bleaching and hand-dyeing the fabric to create bespoke finishes.

www.acnestudios.com | Posted by Merel Kokhuis | Photos courtesy of Acne