When Jonny Johansson is working, he sometimes thinks about the Vasa, a warship built in 1628 to show off the power of Sweden, which sailed less than a mile out of Stockholm harbor on her first voyage before a gust tipped her over. Acne Studios has the opposite record.

It has been sailing through fashion for thirty years without sinking. I like a designer who worries anyway, because the worry tends to make the clothes sharper. This collection is called Denim Hystoria, and it ties Acne's own history, the first jeans in 1996, to a much older idea of dress.

"I started pulling the basic idea of a pair of five-pocket jeans, 1996, first jeans, with a historic dress," Johansson said. "That's the tension I was going for." The spark was London's New Romantics, with Adam Ant on the soundtrack and "Prince Charming" in Frédéric Sanchez's mix.

You see it in puffed skirts and open-back peplums, smocked tops, tiny cropped caban jackets that show the lower back, pink leather capri pants and cropped breeches. About a quarter of the looks have a puffed skirt, and the best of them are worn over jeans. That skirt-over-jean idea is the most useful thing in the show to me.

Denim is worked hard. It becomes low-slung coats with epaulettes, strapped boots, and Rococo-ish jeans printed with fragments of historical imagery. Some green denim is curled and strapped around the body. Floral is the most common detail in the show, on two in five looks, and it often shows up on things you would not expect, like crushed floral leather and high boots with cuffed shafts.

Leather appears on about a quarter of the looks, and a bag on two in five. Cameo-like portrait brooches were pinned to lapels, and satin shoes were ribboned and buckled, which gives the whole thing a musketeer swagger.

Some looks are purposefully overloaded, with a lot of ideas fighting for the same space, and rib-knit underwear, knickers and argyle leggings add to the chaos. I do not mind, because underneath it the core is very wearable.

A puffed skirt over your oldest jeans, a long trench pulled in with two belts, or a pair of tall floral boots with something plain is the version I would actually wear. I think the Acne fans will find their way to those pieces quickly. It is a ship carrying a lot of cargo, and it stays afloat.