Stone Island Sets Sail for SS '026
Summer hits different when you don’t sit still. Not parked on a sunbed for six hours, but moving between heat and breeze, city and coast, sun and salt. Stone Island gets that. For SS '026, it’s all about navigation. With sailing as the setting, the brand puts its pieces in conditions that demand performance, but the payoff is in how it looks doing it.
Since the ‘80s, Stone Island has treated fabric with a function-first approach. This season puts that philosophy out in the open. Set against the Ligurian coastline, the campaign unfolds between open water and shore. Methods of ‘navigation’ form the starting point: how you move, how you adjust, how you stay on course when conditions keep shifting. The central visual symbol is a compass–also the brand’s logo–which underlines how direction isn’t fixed, but rather constantly readjusted.
This balance is embedded in the clothes, and the Hollow Fibre Nylon Indigo-TC + Marmo Corrosion anorak feels like the centerpiece. It starts with compact nylon, engineered using hollow-core fibres (which basically means it keeps volume without dragging you down in weight). Very “prepared for a storm,” but still wearable in favorable conditions. Functionally, it’s all there too: visor hood, half zip, angled pouch pocket, elastic cuffs, drawstring hem.
But Stone Island has always understood that utility works best when it looks slightly obsessive. The piece goes through a proprietary indigo dyeing process, enzyme washing, and finally a marmo corrosion treatment that gives the surface this irregular, marbled finish. The result looks like it’s already lived through sea spray, oxidisation and several dramatic weather systems before you’ve worn it once.
Then there’s the Water Reactive Faded Camo Shiny Nylon swim shorts, which at first glance look understated by Stone Island standards: shiny nylon, faded tonal finish, loose fit. But the moment water hits, the hydro-reactive camouflage appears, tying it directly back into the SS '026 storyline: garments reacting to the environment rather than resisting it.
The Nylon Metal in ECONYL overshirt takes a slightly different route, with Stone Island doing what Stone Island does best: leaning into its long-running fascination with surface and reflection. Made using regenerated ECONYL yarns created from recovered nylon waste, it carries premier sustainability credentials. The double-dye process gives the overshirt that signature Nylon Metal finish, where the surface catches light differently every time the body moves on deck.
Even the most straightforward item in a Stone Island collection can’t simply exist without undergoing a small chemical odyssey. The “Uneven Cold Dyeing” treatment is applied for the Cotton Jersey, before heat fixation locks in the irregular color distribution. Which is a very elaborate way of saying: every single T-shirt comes out differently.
All of the collection pieces don’t just survive the environment by pushing through it, but evolve through the process. Which is probably the most Stone Island thing imaginable. While everyone else is selling summer as escape, Stone Island treats it like a field test.
Find out more about the collection here.
