SIMJAE IS THE FIFTH SUBJECT IN STONE ISLAND'S 100 QUESTIONS

Stone Island dyes its new Q100045 hooded jacket with an inorganic pigment built on industrial iron oxide, engineered to mimic the chalky powder a real sandstorm leaves on cloth rather than a rinse or a wash. The gabardine underneath runs 60 percent recycled cotton yarn to 40 percent conventional cotton. For the Autumn Winter 026 season, the brand put that jacket on Simjae, a Seoul photographer better known locally for Hugan Books, the one room magazine archive he runs largely by himself.

He is the fifth person Stone Island has dressed for Community as a Form of Research, and the first who was already working for the brand before the brand turned the camera on him.

Simjae Runs Hugan Books Out of Seoul, Mostly Alone

Simjae is a Seoul based photographer who also founded Hugan Books, a magazine and book archive space he runs largely on his own. He answered three of the interview's 100 questions on the record: what he collects, whether he prefers words or images, and what he recently learned about himself.

The first answer doubled as a mission statement. He collects Stone Island archive pieces and magazines from the 1990s through the early 2000s, and calls both items whose worth does not fade with time, the same logic that fills Hugan Books' shelves. Asked whether he prefers words or images, he said he usually starts with images, but everything eventually comes together in words, a fair description of an archivist's actual job. Asked what he recently discovered about himself, he said he is better than he thought at storing up energy and spending it at the right moment.

The Q100045 Hood Is Dyed to Fake a Sandstorm

Stone Island's mineral dye recipe is built to reproduce the uneven, chalky buildup a sandstorm leaves on fabric, not a factory finish. The result is a densely woven, heavyweight gabardine with a powdery, dimensional surface closer to worn concrete than new cloth.

Simjae's jacket, style Q100045, is cut as a hooded shell from that mineral dyed gabardine, part of the season Stone Island calls The Compass Inside. It sits in the same Research Department lineage as the Q100019 Light Nylon 3L TC, a jacket dyed whole only after the shell is fully sewn, using a mesh backing built specifically to hold color rather than dyed before construction like most outerwear.

60,000 Dye Recipes Later, One More From Ravarino

Stone Island has produced more than 60,000 dye recipes at its Ravarino headquarters since Massimo Osti founded the brand there in 1982, as FO reported after a tour of the facility internally called The Lab. The Q100045 mineral dye adds to that same catalog, an iron oxide recipe applied to a hooded gabardine instead of the resin coated anorak or garment dyed nylon that opened the AW26 season.

That lab also anchors Community as a Form of Research, the interview arm of the same campaign, and Simjae is not its first subject. UFC fighter Chito Vera opened the series in a textured leather jacket for Spring Summer 26, actor Charlie Hunnam followed in a Membrana 3L TC parka, DJ Adrian Douzmanian answered the same 100 questions in the Q100019 shell, and WNBA champion Breanna Stewart wore the brand's 1200039 overshirt in July. Simjae is the fifth name on that list, and the first archivist.

Stone Island Put Its Own Director in Front of the Lens

Simjae was already working with Stone Island before Community as a Form of Research cast him as a subject. He directed a dedicated Stone Island issue of VISLA Magazine, pairing behind the scenes photography from the Ravarino headquarters with an editorial on Seoul's youth subcultures, shot alongside the craft collective Quispiam Habilis and tattoo artist Koolee.

That history changes the portrait. Most of the campaign's subjects, from Chito Vera to Breanna Stewart, wear Stone Island because Stone Island dressed them for a shoot. Simjae has spent enough hours inside the brand's own archive, and inside Hugan Books' shelves of 1990s and early 2000s magazines, that the Q100045 he is wearing reads less like wardrobe styling and more like an object he would have collected anyway.

Five Subjects Into the Same Hundred Questions

Five subjects into Community as a Form of Research, Hans Ulrich Obrist's 100 question format has held its shape without repeating a type: a UFC fighter, an actor, a DJ, a WNBA champion, and now a magazine archivist. David Sims shot all five, Ferdinando Verderi directed, and Max Pearmain styled every portrait, which is the actual consistency holding the series together rather than the subjects themselves.

The Q100045 gabardine will read as a minor AW26 piece next to the resin coated anorak that opened the season, but pairing a 60,000 recipe dye lab with a one room magazine archive is the sharper move. Stone Island is not casting fans anymore. It is casting people who already keep the same kind of records the brand does.