CITY BOYS UP 10 POINTS AS STONE ISLAND TOURS SEASIDE BEAUTY SPOTS IN A CHROMATIC COMING OF AGE STORY
The essentials list for a pilgrimage to Pleasure Pier is a-changing, gone are the squashed sandwiches and coconut-scented tanning oil. New-gen sunseekers are packing SPF 50 alongside Stone Island’s richly-dyed windbreakers and colour-blocked towels to spend afternoons lounging on candy-striped deck chairs.
It probably started as an afterthought, a pair of best friends with plenty of time and little to fill it with. One mentioned the local shops, the other scoffed. They bantered about video games and high scores, considered seeing multiple films with one cinema ticket but their trims were too fresh to waste on a series of darkened rooms. Eventually, they stumbled upon the seaside, a single train out of the city and into the unknown. After the fact, neither could say whose idea it was, nor why they went, but it would remain idolized in their memories, a legendary summer’s day of youth.
Ice cream cones, sea sprays, burnt noses and first kisses, battered cod and vinegar-soaked chips, wind rushing through the outstretched fingers of a pubescent body hurtling down the Helter Skelter.
There’s no better emblem for a day trip to the edge of adulthood than the Stone Island hallmark, a wind-rose compass that insists anything is possible. For spring/summer 23, the brand’s technically treated fabrics arrive in saturated hues ranging from gentle mint to bolshy orange. Although innovative and functional, the colour rich collection is not exclusive to those at the summit of sporting adventures. Stone Island’s reverence for workwear continues with an experimental craftsmanship approach to casual, utilitarian clothing that is destined to reinforce the brand’s stronghold in working cosmopolitan communities.
The urban landscape may have given rise to streetwear, but industrial towns cannot compete with the innocence of the English Riviera. Charmingly naïve, the British seaside is an evergreen destination for those in pursuit of the good life, its tawny shores peppered with primary coloured fishing boats, rusting oyster traps and lilliputian beach huts. Like Stone Island, it is equal parts history and modernity, quietly celebrating the symbiotic relationship between nature and manufacture.
Credits Photography: Laura Allard-Fleischl @lauraallardfleischl Talent: Etienne @etiennemaclaine H&MU: Iga Wasylczuk @igavaseline