A few days ago, I met a man on the stairs. He was leaving the pop-up as I entered, and as consistently generous and polite PS readers often do, he stopped to tell me how much he enjoyed the website.
Then he said something that surprised me. He said he was grateful to cover Stone Island, which he had never considered before. Like many others, he thought it was a streetwear brand and just as cheap and synthetic as the rest.
But he visited and bought a raincoat and was happy with it. “Of course there’s a lot out there, but a lot of it doesn’t work for me,” he said. “But there are some real gems, once you know what you’re looking for.”
I don’t think he would mind me quoting him. As I mentioned earlier, PS readers are universally generous. And the content touched my heart. Because that’s exactly the message I wanted to convey to that type of person.
place The advantages of Stone Island were explained. Tony a few months ago Write more about the company’s historyToday I thought it would be a good idea to focus on a piece I recently purchased and why it is so special.
This piece is a cropped black jacket reminiscent of a denim jacket, and if you look more closely, it’s an old M43 HBT with large chest pockets.
It’s made from linen, but the linen is glued to the lightweight jersey backing for added structure. This means you get the sturdy shape (less wrinkles) of a denim jacket and the coolness of linen.
When I visited the Stone Island store about a month ago, mainly from the Ghost and Marina lines, I tried on many products, but the one that stood out the most was a jacket that represented Stone Island’s fabric innovation.
This type of jacket has both pure cotton and pure cotton versions. Blackhorse Lane A great Type II denim jacket in linen.; And at Clutch Cafe Full count jacket in new canvas colorAlong with the usual blue and black denim.
But linen always wrinkles and cotton is never cool. In some ways, you get the best of both worlds with the SI version. No one in the world of classic menswear would use that kind of adhesive material.
The jacket is made from a double dyeing process often used on cotton and linen to create a unique dark color. The clothes are then washed to give them a nice fading effect.
This dyeing process doesn’t necessarily make the jacket better than regular linen, but it creates a unique character that readers will especially love about Stone Island.
There are some other cool design details, like the hidden internal pocket on the left (shown below) that’s so subtle it’s easy to miss.
The jacket is expensive, even for Stone Island, at £1,180. It’s probably more than double what PS readers would typically spend on that item.
Some of it depends on the technical aspects of the jacket mentioned above. Part of that is due to the fact that SI is a bigger brand with stores and advertising. And some of that depends on the frequency of collections, which is an interesting topic that we haven’t covered much about permanent style.
Most of the time, we hate brands that change everything every six months. This means you can’t buy the same item again in a different color after a year, and in fact you can’t replace another item after five years.
But the flip side is that there are many new and exciting ideas. As well as new designs, there are a variety of fabrics, cuts and colors. Although it is not suitable for assembling the components of a wardrobe, it is enjoyable and attractive.
When you start exploring designer brands like these, you start to understand why someone would follow a particular designer’s work and talk about buying the collections they release if there’s something that particularly catches their interest.
They identify with that creative mind, follow its journey, and mark the experience with a piece of work at a particular point in time. Companies like Stone Island are especially meaningful to me, given that so much is built around innovation.
This is a very different way to shop than the ones we usually discuss, but it can be exciting and stimulating once you’ve filled out a lot of your regular wardrobe.
Of course, if you only buy occasionally, it also helps with the price.
Since first covering Stone Island last year, I’ve picked up a new piece or two and a friend’s vintage piece (a 1992 Code Popover).
I started to appreciate wearing things I had previously only seen from afar, and this reinforced what I wrote about in the first article: quality, natural materials, the fact that there is something interesting in every collection (even if it’s just one).
For example, you may be able to better explore brands because you know that the most traditional Marina collections are most likely to have attractive products. Next we look at the less traditional and urban Ghost collection. And I only really look at the mainline for technical stuff (rain jackets, etc.).
Stone Island, along with Hermes and Loro Piana, has become one of the few designer brands I regularly check out for their beautiful pieces. And the prices always seem reasonable once you visit the last place.
Shown with anti-drop coach jacket, size medium, vintage US Army work uniform, black rubato knit t-shirt and EB Mayrovitz ‘California’ sunglasses.
