Stone Island Adds Traction Control to Its Navigation Series

Stone Island has a new chapter in its Navigation Series, titled Traction Control, credited to Liam MacRae and dated 2026. It arrives about 14 months after Under the Radar, the longest wait but one in a campaign that began in April 2023 and has now run for more than three years.

The series is a run of visual diptychs that put modern navigational tools into different terrains, with the Stone Island compass in every scene. Stone Island ties it to Massimo Osti's fascination with travel, exploration and functionality. The credit line keeps the format of the earlier chapters: the series name, the title in square brackets, the photographer and the year.

Five Months, Seven, Sixteen, Fourteen

The Navigation Series has run on uneven timing: Search + Rescue in April 2023, Shedding Light in September 2023, Reinvent the Wheel in April 2024 and Under the Radar on August 18, 2025. The gaps were about five months, seven months and sixteen months, and Traction Control follows the last chapter by roughly fourteen.

The calendar has drifted too. Parts 1 and 3 ran in April, the month the series launched, while Part 2 came in September and Part 4 in August. Traction Control reaches November, outside the spring window that two of the first three chapters used.

The sets grew as the gaps did. Search + Rescue had a helicopter hovering with a crew rappelling by rope and a helipad with the compass set into the landing zone. Reinvent the Wheel sent an all terrain vehicle through snow and mud with the compass on the spare tire cover and the custom wheels. Under the Radar went under water: a sonar screen picks up a signal that reveals a circular stone sculpture echoing the compass on the ocean floor, shot off the coast of the Bahamas with a local dive team trained in shark spotting. The Drum reported that no AI was used and that every frame was captured on location.

Traction Control sits in the vocabulary of the 2024 chapter, which was about a vehicle on difficult ground. The credit line gives only a title and a year, so what the frame shows stays with the frame.

The Compass Is the One Fixed Object

The compass in Stone Island's logo comes from Massimo Osti, who built the emblem around his interest in navigation. Every Navigation Series frame places that emblem in a new setting: a helipad, a spare tire cover, the sea floor.

The emblem also does a second job on the rack. Its compass badge construction, the snap button and the stitched edge colour, is the first check for telling an authentic jacket from a counterfeit, so the campaign and the authentication test are about one object.

The autumn portraits work differently. Skepta in the resin coated 41NS001 and Stephen Graham in lasered denim each name a person and a jacket. The Navigation Series names a title and a tool.

MacRae Shot Carmelo Anthony's Saks Jacket Too

Liam MacRae is credited with the shot of Carmelo Anthony in Stone Island's bonded rubberized leather jacket, an edition of 20 pieces sold exclusively at Saks New York and Saks.com. That puts MacRae's name on a limited jacket and on a navigation frame within weeks of each other in autumn 2026.

Osti is the second thread. NO SEASONS, one hooded pattern in six fabrics all dyed piombo, revives an Osti project from 1989 to 1994. Stone Island's autumn leans on its founder in a jacket and in a camera series.

The rest of the season has run on dated installments: a Milan pool installation from April 20 to 26, a Selfridges Corner Shop takeover that runs to November 6, and a Denim Research season at Dover Street Market New York that reached the floor on October 1. Against that schedule, a chapter with no announced date stands out.

The series began about two years after Moncler closed its purchase of Stone Island in March 2021, and the Moncler Group is also where the press release for Part 4 is hosted. Stone Island is run separately from its owner, so the campaign cadence is its own call.

No press release for Traction Control had surfaced by November 3, 2026, unlike Under the Radar, which came with one. Until Stone Island explains it, the evidence is a title, a year and MacRae's name.