swede 'n' low

At any point in the last few years, an observant consumer could stop, take a mental step back, and reasonably wonder: What the hell is going in Sweden? The buzz from the country's music scene has been deafening, while a no less impressive momentum has carried an array of savvy Swedish apparel brands to U.S. shores. Fifth Avenue Shoe Repair, House of Dagmar, Hope, Whyred, Nudie—the list of these anti-H&Ms goes on, but perhaps no brand encapsulates the new generation of Swedish fashion better than Acne. Best known for its razor-sharp denim, Acne is in fact a collective comprising, in addition to its Acne Jeans fashion design team, a digital studio, a film and video production company, a marketing concern, and an editorial office producing the bi-yearly Acne Paper. And the empire is only growing: Today, Acne opens its first store in the United States, bringing the full range of its poetically fastidious sportswear to Greene Street in Soho; a Paris shop is close at hand as well. Here, Acne Jeans designer Jonny Johansson talks to Style.com about thinking small, the drawback to Sweden's creative explosion, and taking Acne global.

What should shoppers expect from the New York store?

With all our stores, we try very hard to be true to the location—you know, really get our hands around the space. No two Acne stores are ever exactly the same. It's not a McDonald's concept; what we try to bring to each one is a sense of creativity at work. We call the stores Acne Studios, and that's how we want them to feel—like studios. The aesthetic is quite Swedish, of course; there's no point building a French bistro on the Palais-Royal, if you know what I mean.

In other words, fealty to location has its limits.

Well, you have to be local at the same time that you're international, but yes, we try to reflect our own culture wherever we go. I don't mean Swedish culture so much as I mean Acne culture—like, when I say we want the Acne Studios to feel like actual studios, I mean, we want them to feel like our studio. We've always thought of the brand as its own little island, not trend-driven, not racing to keep up. What's exciting about opening our own store in the United States is that, finally, people can see the full breadth of what we do—our experiments, our inconsistencies.

What kind of experiments and inconsistencies?

Oh, like right now the thing I'm really into is making miniatures of the clothes. I wanted to see if it's possible to do like in the forties and fities, where the daughter or the son would be wearing the same thing as the mother or father, only in a perfectly scaled-down version. We've made copies of the adult clothes that are as small as a hand, just to see.

Just to see what?

What the pieces looked like small. What I found out is, the smaller the better. Tiny, everything looks amazing.

Speaking of small…Sweden isn't that big a country. Is every other person in Sweden a musician or a fashion designer? As a nation, you're punching way above your weight in terms of creative output.

No, you're almost right. There was a news report about this, in fact; I saw it the other day. For the past ten years, Sweden has had too many people who decide they want to be film directors, or musicians, or fashion designers, or work in TV. It's a problem. No one wants to be a doctor or an engineer anymore.

Maybe you should add a medical practice to the Acne collective.

We spent a long time struggling to define Acne. I think now that we have, the key is to remember that we can't do everything, even if we can do a lot.—Maya Singer

Photo: Courtesy of Acne