Italian sportswear maestros Stone Island have given us a glimpse into their FW14 collection, including two hand painted ‘Camouflage’ pieces that hark right back to the brand’s heritage.

Since it’s inception in 1982 Stone Island has always cultivated a culture of experimentation and functionality. Founded by the late Massimo Osti, the luxury brand continuously proves their cachet as masters of innovative sportswear, embodying the spirit of adventure through high-tech fabric innovation and modernist progression. Building upon their acclaimed historical expertise in dyeing, material research and technical fabrication they continue to explore the boundaries of garment design. Fact: to this day, they’ve developed more than 60,000 different dyeing recipes.

Which brings us to the special edition Raso Hand painted Tortoise Shell pieces, the former a trench coat, the latter a field jacket. These artisan pieces are the absolute counter to fast fashion, each piece has been hand dyed and then faded in selected areas with a corrosive paste, the bleached parts have then been hand painted with a lava coloured, tortoise shell inspired print.

It’s a painstakingly time-consuming manual process, as creative director Carlo Rivetti explains (the jacket is his favoured piece for FW14 – listen up): “It is first dyed and then de-coloured in some targeted areas with a corrosive paste. The tortoise pattern is then individually hand painted on the faded parts, the piece is then over-dyed,” he says.

And it’s these kind of processes that are keeping the real integrity of fashion alive. They’re also readily available online along with the full FW14 collection – right now. Check it out online here.