In a nutshell
A richly material, sound-infused flagship that evolves Stone Island’s SoHo store from product temple to subcultural clubhouse, showing how a fabric-obsessed Italian brand can use space, music and community to anchor itself in downtown New York’s creative ecosystem.
In their words
Brand Background
Stone Island was founded in 1982 in Ravarino, Italy, by designer and “garment engineer” Massimo Osti as an offshoot of his C.P. Company label. The first Stone Island collection was built around Tela Stella - a heavy, two-sided tarpaulin originally used for truck covers, transformed through stone washing into weathered, sea-beaten outerwear and finished with the now-iconic compass badge. Osti’s work quickly became synonymous with fabric innovation, from reflective and thermosensitive textiles (the Ice Jacket) to complex garment-dyeing techniques that produced depth of colour and patina; over the 1980s and 1990s the brand was adopted by European football terraces, Italian paninari, British casuals and later global streetwear communities as a symbol of connoisseur-level technical sportswear.
In 2020 Moncler acquired Stone Island in a deal valuing the brand at around €1.15 billion, positioning it as a key pillar in a broader Italian luxury outerwear and lifestyle portfolio. Under current CEO Robert Triefus - formerly a senior executive at Gucci - Stone Island has focused on sharpening its narrative around “material research, community and cultural programming,” using retail as both a laboratory and a stage for that story.
Visit Field notes
The design - by AMO - the research and design studio of OMA, led by Samir Bantal and Jason Long - is a celebration of materials and references: natural, but transformed; man-made, but humanised.
The store brings to likfe Stone Island’s “lab” and “life” philosophy: upstairs, visitors are greeted by core collections hung on stainless steel rails, with walls alternating between charred cork and brushed stainless steel, video screens showing dyeing and testing processes, and prismatic special editions like the Uneven Ripstop Prismatico parka presented like artefacts.
Nautical references to the compass logo appear in porthole-like display niches and industrial hardware, while lounge furniture by designers Tim Teven and Markus Töll slows the pace and invites dwell time.
A green-carpeted stair at the rear leads down to a subterranean lounge where the brand’s Stone Island Sound initiative comes to life: a monumental stainless-steel DJ booth, modular sound system (Friendly Pressure: Studio One), books, bar and club-like seating host events and listening sessions, making the basement as much a cultural venue as a sales floor.
The long, linear floorplan is zoned so that pace “gradually shifts” from gallery to intimate club as visitors move deeper into the space. The basement as a “community hub” where New York’s music and streetwear scenes intersect, reinforcing Triefus’s aim to make the store “a living place” rather than a static showroom.
Spatial sequencing, material storytelling and programmed culture combine to give the brand further influence at the intersection of materials and culture - a player in a global city, while remaining authentic to its origins.
Checkout
- Materials and finish
- Dwell spaces as you move deeper into the store
- Basement with DJ and music setup.
Other Reading
- Stone Island press release on the store's opening.
- Wallpaper's review of the store.
- Dazed's comments on the "community hub"
- Hypebeast's store opening review, with commentary on the sound system and transitions through the store.
- A reminder of the previous store's design (a few doors down the same street) to see the development in style.
- Moncler's 'story of the brand' on their website.
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