Art and business – the ACNE core values

The Annual General meeting 2010 of the French Chamber of Commerce took place on May the 3rd and was followed by a lunch conference with key note speaker Mikael Schiller, CEO of the Swedish fashion company ACNE.

Mikael Schiller talked about how the ACNE journey started in 1996 and the founders’ idea about a creative collective working with design, music, advertising, video, fashion and film. The famous Ipren commercial is for instance made by ACNE.

Mikael told us the very entertaining story of how the first pair of jeans with red stitches was designed by one of the founders, Jonny Johansson. The designer was so disappointed with the result that he hid the jeans under his desk for several weeks until the bookkeeper received the invoice from the factory and wondered where the 100 pair of jeans had disappeared… Colleagues and friends then started to wear the jeans and soon everybody wanted to have these jeans and the brand ACNE jeans was born. The company launched its first denim collection in 1997.

They had a lot of fun in this creative collective but after a couple of years the company was close to bankruptcy and Mikael was called in to rescue the company and add a business focus to the creative activities of the company. They focused on sales and to get the right personnel in the organization and great staff in the stores. The ambition was to combine art and business and it worked. This is still one of the core values of the company. 

The trendy Paris store Colette started to sell ACNE jeans and that’s where movie director Sofia Coppola discovered the jeans. She decided to use the jeans in a big fashion report she made, adding on to the international success of the brand.

Recently ACNE launched a cooperation project with Lanvin and their chief designer Alber Elbaz.

One of the questions the audience asked Mikael was about the name ACNE, where does it come from? 
- It started as a funny challenge, Mikael explained. How to turn a name full of negative values into one of positive values.  At one occasion later on we had to invent that ACNE was an abbreviation of “Ambition to Create Novel Expression.

Today ACNE is a full blown fashion house and the brand’s ready to wear and denim collections can be found in over 20 Acne Studios around the globe or in one of the over 600 retailers such as Harrods and Liberty in London, Colette and Le Bon Marché in Paris, Barney’s, Jeffrey and Opening Ceremony in New York and Isetan in Tokyo.

Apart from fashion part the ACNE collective today exists of several different sister companies, Acne Production, Acne Advertising, Acne Art Department, Acne Junior and Acne Paper.

As a first approach to the French market ACNE established an office and showroom in Paris during 2006. The response was overwhelmingly positive and press features included a full page on Acne in French Vogue. At this time Acne was also picked up by Le Bon Marché and Colette, who both continue to carry the brand.

2008 saw Acne Studio Paris opening its doors at Palais Royale, 2009 followed with an Acne shop-in-shop at Galleries Lafayettes and in January 2010 the Acne men’s collection and the Acne Nya Berlin furniture project were both launched in Paris during men’s fashion week.

(Text by Kristina Hulteberg CCFS)

CCFS chairman and directors together with Mikael Schiller