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‘Stone Island is a religion’: fashion chief Carlo Rivetti on football’s famous brand and dressing Eric Cantona
‘Stoney’ has been worn by everyone from Drake to Keir Starmer, but its position as label of choice on the terraces gets the highest attention score. We talk to its chair and former owner
Most histories pinpoint the European Championships of 1992 when England fans came back after a dismal group-stage exit with bags full of the latest Stone Island, bought (mostly) from the celebrated Genius store in Copenhagen, as the moment the brand properly arrived in the UK before filtering out through football culture into acid house and seemingly anywhere groups of men gathered. Photograph: Heikki Kaski“The football casuals of the 1980s were, in many ways, the modern-day equivalents of the young men embarking on the Grand Tour in the 18th century,” says Andrew Groves, professor of fashion design at the University of Westminster. But it is worth remembering – as pointed out in Magnetic, Tony Rivers and James Burnett ’s exhaustive history of the brand’s early years – that by the late 90s, Stoney was so ubiquitous that Dale Winton, Philip Schofield and Ronan Keating also sported it on children’s TV, leading some fans to desert it.
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