Driving Fashion: Acne Creates Clothing with Comfort and Style
By Christine Arnefors
August is filled with Scandinavian style first Copenhagen Fashion Week and then Stockholm Fashion Week. Instead of meeting new beautiful friends and influential bloggers at the runway shows, I’ve been hanging around with an old beige Mercedes in a dusty Swedish small town in the hopes of finally getting a driver’s license.
Sadly enough, fashion and cars seem hard to unite. New behind the steering wheel, driving is a physical challenge that includes wrestling with the gearbox and kicking the brakes. Shoes with high heels are a no-no. Practically everything that is cute and floppy is just not car-compatible. I’m left with a pair of running shoes, in a shining white which makes my feet look a size 10½. Oh horror.
But the big news is…looking sporty is the new black! The Swedish brand Acne has managed to keep its cred among the Swedish fashion underground while simultaneously expanding abroad, such as a collaboration with French Lanvin and the opening of a flagship store in New York, presented a new, sport influenced line during Copenhagen Fashion Week. Right in time for the Olympic Games, too.
The chief designer Jonny Johansson explained how he got the idea from a woman biking through Tribeca in New York wearing a suit jacket and sporty leggings, looking effortlessly great. Their new line for women, “Acne New Standard,” available in summer 2009, combines sportswear with more formal wear, and men’s wear with women’s wear. And for lovers of expensive accessories: a minimalist racer bike made in cooperation with Italian Bianchi will also be on sale.
Comfort and style in a perfect combination? Choose for yourself, but next summer I will certainly be able to strut up any street in town wearing casual car wear in the style of a retired personal trainer, pretending I just sprang out from a high fashion model shoot.
