Archives, personal histories, mirrors, and the future — a lot has been guiding designers this season. But at Acne Studios, for Fall 2022 creative director Jonny Johansson is taking us back to a place where, in recent years, many of us have vowed never to return: the home.

If instinct is all we have to go off, then on a quest for comfort the home should be our natural first port of call. Needless to say this has flipped in the pandemic years, where homelife has presented its own source of trauma. For this season however, Johansson is coaxing us into trusting our instincts again, and if home is the centre then he's telling us to heal from the heart out.

This pull toward the domestic can be found in the materials. From the more obvious; puffy brocade slippers and robin's egg blue quilted bathrobe to match. To the less so; fringed skirts and drape-y dresses with trimming redolent of antique lamps and tasseled curtains. As is always the case with Acne Studios, Johansson looks to that which is considered chintzy or ugly, elevating and injecting it with a reimagined aesthetic destiny.

The dinner glove pops up once again. This time in a ribbed cotton with thigh length ribbed socks to match. Another glove shape is embraced also, the fingerless, sleeve kind, summoning images of early aughts Avril Lavigne. Hemlines are longer. White jersey is draped like bedsheets. While tailoring is reserved for suit jackets, structured and top heavy. Patchwork jean bootleg pants bring denim into the conversation. And when Acne Studios is the subject, denim cannot be ignored. Here it arrives in a dirty wash, in both faded blue and grey, and stitched into floor length skirts and evening gowns. Pushing the limits of what this casual material can be.

Industrial metallics, soft peaches and blue, are interspersed with a lusty red and the cool hues of denim. Blue and yellow florals are a compulsory inclusion for the brand, and while the colours could simply take from the Swedish flag, in our current time they read as a bouquet of hope for Ukraine. Lilac silk, like the kind carved into marble, gently hugs the female form as though a bedtime chemise.

Toward the end mini dresses emerge, embroidered in a cerulean blue brocade and paired with matching stockings flashing a slither of thigh. A puce toned bodysuit arrives next, swathed in the same pattern. They're following with a pegged floor length skirt, belted with the accessory du jour, a leather strap holding a swan encrusted motif.

What is Acne Studios without a show of covetable accessories? Taking from both the sea and land, platinum wreaths stepped in as bracelets while a medley of silver seashells compressed together became a choker. Leather purses are geometric and triangular in shape. While scarves are sewn to appear moth-eaten and frayed.

To cap it all off, ribbed, wispy and punctured oatmeal cotton previously crocheted into gloves and form-fitting boots, is fashioned into a hulking hipped evening gown. Overall, the collection is soft and tender, flowing with movement and leaning into the cosy furnishings of the home. A wardrobe preemptively made for when the time eventually comes to leave this space of safety, so that we can reenter the world coddled in the relics of home and hopefully bring some of that softness with us to share.

Watch the Acne Studios Fall 2022 show, below.