We need more collaborations like Stone Island x La Sportiva
The year was 2004
January 15th, 2025
We live in the era of collaborations between brands, actors and maisons, and between pastry shops and luxury brands. It is a tactic designed to achieve high media engagement and, consequently, high returns. However, there are as many partnerships that shake up social media as those that end up being forgotten. In the past, there were collaborations capable of shaking the fashion system, even before Virgil Abloh's work convinced the highest authorities in fashion to include street style in luxury. The Stone Island x La Sportiva partnership is an example: launched in 2004—when climbing was not yet viral on TikTok and when the world of sports approached the fashion industry only through footballers like David Beckham or basketball players like Michael Jordan—the collaboration managed to anticipate contemporary trends such as gorpcore. At the same time, it shocked the Stone Island community, which at the time was primarily composed of hooligans and ultras.
Although the founder of Stone Island, Massimo Osti, had left the brand in 1995, by the early 2000s, the brand's image remained strongly anchored to its original vision, tied to English football culture and 1980s sportswear. Paul Harvey, Stone Island's artistic director from 1995 to 2007, decided to innovate the brand by pursuing technical material research inspired by the military wardrobe. The collaboration with La Sportiva, announced in 2004, was Stone Island's first partnership. At the time, the two brands could not have been more different: La Sportiva produced items exclusively for outdoor sports enthusiasts, from mountaineering to climbing, with a strict focus on performance. Stone Island created technical clothing but was deeply tied to its aesthetic values, which were so loved by ultras who showed up at stadiums with the iconic black, yellow, and green patch on their left shoulder. The only common ground was their Italian heritage. With the mountains, the clientele of the brand founded by Massimo Osti had little connection. Yet Harvey decided to collaborate on a pair of climbing shoes.
Twenty years before the term “gorpcore” was coined, the product of the collaboration between La Sportiva and Stone Island remains one of the most innovative items of its kind. Launched on the market in various colors, in both low and high-top versions, the sneaker featured the characteristic climbing shoe sole, a thick and soft rubber layer, laces running across the entire upper, and Stone Island branding on the sole, heel, and tongue. The influence of the compass rose brand in the collab was more evident in the high-top version, with its distinctly military silhouette that, despite the malleable sole, echoed the structure of combat boots. Judging by the look (and the price, which was around 200 euros), it's possible the collab didn’t land either in the stands among football fans or on the mountain on the feet of climbers. Nonetheless, the project marks a crucial moment for the birth of technical streetwear and confirms how the two brands were pioneers of one of the main trends of the 2020s. In hindsight, one could say that gorpcore is a Y2K aesthetic Made in Italy.