STONE ISLAND'S PASSPORT TRACKS COLLECTORS IN SEVEN CITIES

Adrian Douzmanian answered 100 Questions for Stone Island in July. SimJae answered the same set in August. This week, both collectors turn up again, this time on camera, inside Passport, a short documentary from director Glenn Kitson that frames Stone Island's living archive and the collector community built around it across seven cities, London, Paris, Naples, New York, Toronto, Seoul and Tokyo. Nowness released the film this week, and it screened at The Cinema at Selfridges on September 23, the same department store currently running Stone Island's six week Selected Works retail takeover.

Eight Collectors, One Archive, Three FO Stories Now

Passport interviews eight collectors on camera, London archivists Arco Maher and HOLSALES and vintage store 194 Local, Seoul's SimJae, Paris specialist Metallic Curtain, Toronto's Better Gift Shop, Naples' PEZZE and Tokyo vintage curator 'bout, shot on vintage digital cameras across each city. SimJae already answered Stone Island's 100 Questions series in August, becoming the fifth subject in that written format before appearing on camera in Passport a month later, one collector doing double duty across two formats of one larger project.

The Selfridges Takeover Already Told Half This Story

Passport is not a standalone film. It is the documentary half of Selected Works '82 to '026, The Collector Series, the six week Selfridges Corner Shop takeover designed by Willo Perron that opened September 21 and runs to November 6. That takeover already put outside collectors in charge of selling pieces from Stone Island's own back catalogue rather than letting the brand curate its own retrospective. Passport supplies the faces and the cities behind that premise, turning a retail concept about who gets to define an archive into eight specific answers filmed on the ground in the cities where those collections live.

Naples Already Had Its Own Camera Pointed at This Question

Naples appears twice in Stone Island's recent archive coverage. 3house answered Hans Ulrich Obrist's own questions about Stone Island on film earlier this month, a different interview format asking a version of the question Passport now puts to eight more collectors in seven other cities, why this specific archive matters enough to build a life around collecting it. Massimo Osti founded Stone Island in 1982, and Selected Works spans its own title from 82 to 026, forty four years of archive that both 3house's Obrist interview and Passport's eight city survey are treating as active research rather than settled history.

The Badge Is What Every Collector in Passport Is Verifying

Every collector Passport interviews is, implicitly, in the business of authenticating what the compass badge and the ART number inside the collar confirm about a garment's decade and origin, a verification system that separates an archive piece from a reproduction. Skepta's own rarest Stone Island jacket, a 2001 green micro felt transparent piece he wore to Reading Festival, only carries value because a badge and a number inside the collar confirm what year it left the factory. Passport's eight collectors are running an identical authentication instinct at a community scale, across seven cities, rather than on one celebrity jacket.

Three Formats, One Question, Two Months to Answer It

Stone Island has now run the same underlying question, why do people build their lives around this archive, through three different formats in two months, a written 100 Questions series, a Selfridges retail takeover designed by Willo Perron, and now Passport's eight city documentary. Nobody covering a single drop gets to ask that question three times in two months. Stone Island can, because the archive itself, forty four years deep and still generating new collector relationships in cities as far apart as Toronto and Tokyo, is the product being sold here. The badge and the ART number are just how anyone proves the piece came from where they say it did.