STONE ISLAND MAKES HISTORY WITH FIRST MUSICIAN COLLAB DAVE

## The First Musician Partnership Dave is the first musician to collaborate on a custom Stone Island look, creating a modular stage wardrobe to wear while touring his third studio album, The Boy Who Played the Harp. This milestone breaks 42 years of brand tradition for the Italian technical fashion house. The collaboration centers on Stone Island's signature grid camouflage evolving through a new technique where a reflective coating is transferred to the garments through a resin bath filled with thousands of glass microspheres. This creates both a highly reflective pattern and a depth of color unique to each item. Dave's 'The Boy Who Played the Harp' 2026 tour spans March through May 2026, hitting major venues from Glasgow's OVO Hydro to Brooklyn's Paramount across North America and Europe. ## Technical Innovation Meets Performance The custom pieces showcase Stone Island's advanced material research capabilities. Dave's new camouflage features on a hooded jacket with an attachable vest and matching convertible nylon canvas pants, collectively becoming blindingly bright when hit with lights. Dave's iridescent double-layer metal jumpsuit, built from a mesh facade creating complex lines, is only slightly less luminescent. This technology represents Stone Island's latest evolution in reflective garment development, building on decades of research dating back to Stone Island starts researching reflectivity, introducing the REFLECTIVE JACKET in 1992. ## Strategic Brand Evolution The Dave partnership aligns with Stone Island's expanded cultural strategy. Through Stone Island Sound, the brand delves into the medium of music, underscoring its commitment to amplifying contemporary culture. Emphasising Stone Island's core ethos, 'Community as a Form of Research,' this project gathers friends and family of the brand to create a vibrant music catalogue. Stone Island has always had a strong hand in the music world, from outfitting the Italian paninaros in the '80s, the British indie rockers and the Acid House ravers in the '90s, the Grime rappers in early 2000s and mainstream hip-hop stars, like Jay-Z and Drake, into today. In 2022, the Italian label launched its own music venture, Stone Island Sound, with a slew of curated C2C Festivals around the world. ## Commercial Strategy and Release Dave's reflective look is recreated using a digital print heat-transferred onto a jacket, vest, and pants, with a limited-edition reflective camo garment-dyed T-shirt to match. It all arrives on March 6 via select Stone Island stores (in Paris, London, Munich, Toronto, Los Angeles, and New York) and Dover Street Market London, where an installation will spotlight notable Stone Island pieces acquired by Dave over the past decade. The March 6 release date strategically coincides with Dave's tour momentum, as A world tour has been announced, and tickets are selling fast. Dave is back and better than ever, coming in hot with his new album, 'The Boy Who Played The Harp', landing this Autumn, and announcing a world tour alongside the project, with new dates added! ## Competitive Context While Stone Island breaks new ground in musician partnerships, technical fashion competitors are aggressively expanding. The relaunch, spearheaded by Wieden+Kennedy and executive produced by Jackass co-founder Jeff Tremaine, represents Nike's renewed commitment to the $5.56 billion North American trail running market and signals the company's intention to compete more directly with rapidly growing outdoor specialists like Arc'teryx and Hoka. Arc'teryx alone surpassed $2 billion in revenue for the first time in 2024, while Hoka grew sales 27.9 percent to $1.8 billion in fiscal 2024. Stone Island, the group's second brand, posted full-year 2025 revenues of €411.2 million, up 4 percent cFX. The Q4 trajectory stood out: revenues climbed 16 percent cFX to €123.1 million, with every geography growing at double-digit rates—Asia up 22 percent, the Americas up 26 percent, and EMEA up 12 percent. ## Cultural Significance And then his Stone Island archive goes on tour with him, hitting Stone Island's SoHo flagship store ahead of Dave's New York show on April 29. This makes Dave not only the first musician to design a custom Stone Island look but also the first to take his Stone Island archive on the road. The collaboration represents Stone Island's evolution from technical outerwear specialist to cultural curator. Now, a new project formalises this connection: titled 'Stone Island Sound', it sees the brand announce a series of playlists and live events with the theme 'sound as a form of research' (a nod to Stone Island's approach to creating clothing, which largely begins with experiments on fabrics and the way they hold dyes). It is also a reference to a recent campaign featuring friends and longtime wearers of the brand – including Oasis' Liam Gallagher – which ran with the tagline 'community as a form of research', a recognition of how devoted Stone Island fans have shaped its trajectory. This Dave partnership signals Stone Island's intent to own the intersection of performance, technology, and culture in 2026.