Thirty years after its first 100 pairs of jeans were shared among friends, the Stockholm house returns to denim and the creative community that has grown around it.
In 1996 Acne Studios started with 100 pairs of raw denim jeans, finished with red stitching and given to friends and creatives. Three decades later, the Stockholm house returns to that founding gesture with Nan Goldin, whose photography has long transformed friendship, intimacy and chosen family into an archive of lived experience.
As the brand recalls on its website: “It all began with a pair of jeans. A limited run of raw denim with red top-stitching and a simple dream: to be shared with friends. 30 years later, Acne Studios remains faithful to its community, spanning time with a collective of performers and artists, muses, true blue friends and visionary minds.”
Goldin photographs nine figures from that extended creative circle: Ellie Rowsell, Guinevere Van Seenus, Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Jordan Hemingway, Juliette Lewis, Peter Schlesinger, Raya Martigny, Rila Fukushima and Sandra Poulson. A tenth portrait is still to be revealed. Their presence traces relationships already embedded in the house’s history, from Chase, who created the set for its Spring Summer 2025 show in Paris, to Poulson, whose sculptures have appeared in Acne Studios stores.
Denim connects those relationships across time. Each subject wears current pieces alongside archival and reissued designs spanning three decades, while the accompanying ‘Anniversary Re Edition Denim’ collection revisits early Acne Studios codes through red stitching, raw denim and the flame patch.
For Goldin, whose ‘The Ballad of Sexual Dependency’ turned friends and lovers into one of photography’s defining personal chronicles, the commission creates a natural correspondence. Thirty years after those first jeans were passed among friends, Acne Studios marks the anniversary by returning to the people around it.
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