About 18 months ago, Jonny Johansson was hanging out with his son and a friend when they started talking about Luxmaxing. “I thought, ‘What are you talking about?’ So I looked into this rabbit hole on TikTok for guys who want to look their best, with tips on how to beautify yourself, take care of your skin, and boost your manhood. Have gone – and I think that increases the chances of orgasm.
Johansson transferred her observations of this contemporary version of the perennially masculine teenage phase onto the clichéd character around which this Acne Studios collection was built. Both body-conscious and clothing-conscious, they wore deep-necked fantasy-gym shirts as competitive statements. Leg days weren’t ignored either: “People are into boxer shorts these days. It’s not jersey underwear anymore,” Johansson announces authoritatively.
As well as LookMaxxing, his cipher was Looks-nerding, he adopted Gentleman Alan Flusser’s favourites, including Acne variations of classic loafers and a new hyper-harmonic jeans cut called 2010. This looks-nerd had an almost quintessential black leather blouse look. A jacket cut with wide zip pockets is sitting on the railing with us.
The brand’s popular trompe l’oeil jeans were paired with a check cotton oversized shirt that was wearable both long sleeve and short. Check jacket-shirt hybrid cut tights were worn with ties over voluminous double-silk chinos. To match the detailed precision of the approach and the self-awareness it inspired, many of the looks were accompanied by the brand’s oversized camera bags, some aspects of which were incorporated into the clothes themselves. It was an intelligently generous and non-judgmental collection of conversations centered around that digital expression of masculinity’s perpetual self-reflexivity. This looked like maximum.
