Stone Island, the Italian brand that reinvented the concept of casual wear, was founded in 1982 out of the passion and brilliant research into textile finishing performed by its creator and art director, intellectual from Bologna, Massimo Osti. It was Osti, in the mid-Seventies, who researched thousands of uniforms and pieces of work clothing and catalogued their functional characteristics. In Ravarino, in the province of Modena, he created a company whose hub was a full-scale centre of research into materials and treatments became a sophisticated laboratory for garment and experimental dyeing.
The story of Stone Island began, almost by chance, with research into a special material, a thick truck tarpaulin, the outstanding feature of which was that it had been resin-treated in red on one side and blue on the other. The first prototype was too stiff, so it was washed for a long period in water with pumice stones to break down the structure of the material. The result was surprising, a worn-look garment with great appeal. It was therefore decided to create seven jackets in that unique fabric, called Tela Stella, and to give this product a name. The strong identity of the project called for an important name, which was identified by analysing the most commonly occurring words in Joseph Conrad’s novels: the words Stone and Island were chosen.
Stone Island has a marine feel, conjuring up old oilskins corroded by the sea and a military feel, which is drawn from the fund of research completed until that time. The name also evokes a love of the sea and that first treatment selected to “process” the garments. The badge, the detachable fabric label that has distinguished Stone Island garments since the first season, showed a Compass Rose, displayed like a military badge.

The reaction is immediate. Stone Island became a success phenomenon, with no set plan or marketing research behind it.
A typically Italian mix of creativity, intuition and entrepreneurial spirit.




A culture of research, experimentation, function and use are the matrixes that have always defined Stone Island: the sportswear brand established in 1982, designed to become a symbol of extreme research on fibres and textiles, applied to an innovative design. Season after season, it is through the study of form and the “manipulation” of the matter that Stone Island has found its own language with the aim of establishing new boundaries in the world of garment making.
The study of uniforms and of work wear, its evolution according to new requirements of use, has become Stone Island’s observation post for defining a project in which the clothing item’s function is never just aesthetic.
An ongoing investigation, thorough and without frontiers, on the processing and ennobling of fibres and textiles, leading to discover materials and production techniques never used before in the clothing industry.
Jackets constructed in nylon monofilament, deriving from the water filtering technology. Highly reflective or thermo-sensitive fabrics, changing colour with the variation of temperature. Featherweight polyester cloth vacuum- coated with a 100% stainless steel film used in aviation technology to protect the on-board computers. Non-woven materials, Kevlar® and polyester felt, rhomboidal nets in polyester used in the construction industry and coated in polyurethane. These are some examples of materials conceived by Stone Island philosophy.
Stone Island’s strength is also based on the unique ability to intervene on the finished item, through the continuous tests on dyeing and treatments carried out in the Sportswear Company’s laboratory of colour. A department able to combine advanced technology, experience and human capacity and that has developed more than 60,000 different recipes of dyes throughout the years.
All the accumulated knowledge and experience, an inalienable heritage, on which great part of Stone Island’s know-how is based, is kept in the historical archive that collects the trial tests, and the recipes for textile dyeing and handling that have been developed by all those people who have worked on this project with passion.