We’ve always thought that the Tela Stella is the coolest-sounding Stone Island jacket, and that’s saying a lot because Osti came up with a load of mad names for his fabrics – Raso Gommato, Millefoglie, Taffeta. Anyway, when I recently found myself in an eBay trance, salivating at very expensive Tela Stella jackets and it got me thinking – how did Osti come up with such a crazy name for this jacket? I ended up going down a bit of a rabbit hole, and that’s what has qualified me to give you this crash-course history on the origins of one of the most influential brands in the world.
It all started back in the early 1980s when a man was messing about with military truck tarpaulins and he thought that the material would be pretty sweet to make clothes out of. Long story short – truck tarpaulins aren’t really a thing anymore, that man is no longer with us and his collection of brands is amongst the most recognised in the world.

Right yeah, there’s a bit more to it. That man and his brands are Massimo Osti, Stone Island, and C.P. Company, we’re pretty sure that you’ll be familiar with all of those names, but what you might not be familiar with is the story of how Osti laid the foundations for C.P. Company and Stone Island.
As we were saying, it all started when a 40-something-year-old Osti was fascinated by the fabric that was used to make military truck tarpaulins, he must’ve been a slightly strange bloke because from our experience, when most men are middle-aged the usual fascinations are sport, food and seeing their mates once a year – not designing jackets out of military sheet fabric.
Anyway, for a bit of background on military truck tarpaulins from the ’80s, they were heavy, oily, made of cotton and obviously very durable, during the process of creating the truck tarpaulins, the fabric was impregnated on one side by a weatherproof wax that gave it a sheen, there was no fancy name for the material it was simply referred to as a type of nylon.


Due to the properties of the military fabric, Osti thought it would be ideal to construct hard-wearing garments from, so he set about obtaining some of it and running all kinds of experiments to make sure it was fit for human wear as well as vehicular wear. Osti eventually managed to be able to get the fabric soft enough for human use but had no luck dyeing it due to the weatherproof treatment the material received. Determined not to give up, Osti set about dyeing the entire garment after it was produced – it worked. This laid the foundations for the process known as garment dyeing which would later contribute largely to Stone Island’s success.
Osti had done it, he’d produced a jacket from the truck tarpaulin material and was so overjoyed with it that he decided it needed to be named, he settled on Tela Stella – which is the Italian translation of ‘Star Fabric’. One of the most unique features of the garment was that it appeared in two different colours on the inside and outside, this was due to the garment dyeing process reacting differently with the treated side versus the untreated side.


While Osti was made-up with his new tarpaulin jacket, he realised quickly that it did not fit with his brand, C.P. Company’s, traditional sportswear look. Unlike most people who would just shove it in and hope no one would notice, Osti was so confident and passionate about his Tela Stella appendage that he decided there was no other option but to create an entirely new label that would be centred around this militaristic, utilitarian style of design. He decided to call this new label – Pebble Beach.
No, he didn’t, he decided to call it Stone Island. Legend has it that Osti came up with this name after his fascination with the works of Polish-British novelist – Joseph Conrad, this fascination likely stemmed from Osti’s fixation with nautical things – you know, boats and the sea and stuff, as in Conrad’s novels he reminisced of when had served as a merchant marine. There was one issue though, Osti could only read Conrad’s literature in Italian translations, and he was dead-set on having an English name for his new brand. This resulted in him tasking his wife Daniella who could speak English to read the original works of Conrad and underline every word she thought sounded interesting.

Who knows how many biros Daniella went through for her husband, but what we do know is that the underlined words he settled on were Stone and Island. This is because he reckoned that the word Stone evoked durable and resilient characteristics, and that Island referenced the maritime and nautically influenced design elements that he was so enthused by. Maybe people weren’t really understanding the Island part of the brand’s name because shortly after its foundation, Osti created the Stone Island Marina line, which is a bit more on the nose, isn’t it?
So with his new favourite fabric and an aptly named outerwear label, Osti set about designing the first-ever Stone Island range, and it’s safe to say he went a bit mad with Tella Stella – all of the items were made out of it. However, the Italian visionary came to a bit of a realisation in the process of creating the brand’s first collection – the clothes made people look a bit too much like they were wrapped in a military truck tarpaulin, strange that. To solve this issue, Osti decided that a form of branding was necessary to ensure his clientele didn’t look like they’d gone rogue on an Italian military base and for this branding he opted for the medium of a badge.

The result of Osti’s creative efforts over the past couple of years was finally shown when he unveiled Stone Island’s introductory collection, it was comprised of seven beautifully badged Tela Stella jackets, boiler suits and smocks. Obviously, these ended up being a hit with the locals as he went on to design a second collection, and many more after that.
Nowadays, Stone Island reserves Tela Stella fabric only for special occasions, such as their 30th anniversary which saw them reintroduce a rendition of Osti’s original smock, central badge placement, white buttons and all. Never really liked that anniversary badge they did though.

So there you have it, that’s how Stone Island was created. There are a million and one articles out there detailing how the brand was picked up by British louts who enjoyed indulging in pies, lager and football on the weekend, so we’re not going to go into that. But what we will say is that people’s opinions on Stone Island gear that has been produced in the last couple of decades are constantly changing – people moaning (understandably) about prices, quality drop-offs and American celebrities wearing it.
But what you never hear people saying is that they don’t like old Stone Island stuff – there seems to be a unanimous agreement amongst all of us on the brilliance of Massimo Osti’s early creative process, it’s the reason that people are still spending thousands of pounds on old jackets and spending hours removing the flaking, sticky, likely hazardous, linings.
So yeah, nice one Massimo.


