Talk of the concept of “craft” and artisanal processes, and the connotations are of whittling by candlelight in Geppetto’s workshop. Which is entirely lovely, and certainly true of certain handcrafting processes in historic epicentres such as Tuscany, but the making process can be entirely 21st-century, too. Futuristic factories, groundbreaking R&D departments and advanced technology over aged artisans crafting on looms. Streetwear and outerwear might not have the same lyrical storytelling as, for example, the craft behind a Manolo Blahnik shoe or Hermès bag, but the work behind an exceptional jacket is just as intensive and thorough.

Take, for example, the skill bubbling away at the Stone Island factory in Ravarino in Emilia-Romagna, Northern Italy’s industrial heartland; it’s the region renowned for its carmaking expertise and that sense of pioneering technology informs the work that goes on within these hallowed halls. Stone Island was founded here in 1982, and kept its HQ in the same location ever since. Advanced technology was always part of the particular USP; in 1984 it created one of its hallmarks, the Raso Gommato polyurethane coating on coats that’s still in operation today, and it was one of the few European outerwear brands to make early waves in Japan, thanks to the excellence of its technology and ability to capture that market at just the right time. Further advancements in the ’80s involved thermosensitive fabrications and rubberised materials. The signature Stone Island jackets might be distinctive for that familiar badge on the arm, but there’s a wealth of skill beneath the surface.

The most recent showcase of its R&D department’s might could be its most ambitious yet. As part of its spring/summer 24 offering, the brand launched its Dissolving Grid Camo jacket, a fractured pattern on an Econyl material – regenerated nylon. The surface is reflective, thanks to the employment of a coating comprising thousands of microspheres of glass.

Then there’s the Prototype Research Series initiative, a moniker that’s suitably science speak. The range began in 2016, and recently debuted its eighth collection (or Series 08) during Milan Design Week. It was founded out of a zeal for fabric experimentalism, enlisting partners in various industrial fields to work on materials that have never been applied to clothing.

For Series 08, overseen by the brand’s design director Silvio Rivetti, specialists in the fields of boating, sports and automotive lend their insight and create a striking new garment. The resulting cape in question could have stepped straight from the set of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune; a futuristic, sweeping cape mottled with stone and sand-shades over a lattice-like pattern. The fabric is a mixture of linen and fibreglass, reinforced by a “multiaxial base” and then treated with ‘subsequent needle-cohesion to a non-woven fabric veil’. Are you keeping up?

Stone Island then employed inkjet printing and double lamination of aliphatic polyurethane film; that’s the protective layer that’s applied across laminated glass and reflective road signs. The resulting piece – there will be a limited- edition run of just 100 – is aesthetically designed to evoke a ‘large fresco, a dreamlike organic landscape reminiscent of a primordial world’. Previous iterations of the Series projects have employed liquid crystals to create a heat reactive surface that changes hues, and a jumpsuit which featured a “compacting process” to physically change the proportions and colour of the same garment. Exhaustive work, then, that lends a new interpretation of what “artisanal” means in the 21st-century design landscape.

stoneisland.com