Everything about Liam Gallagher is suddenly hot news. As announced last week, the famously opinionated Mancunian Brit-pop tearaway will heal a famous 15-year rift with his brother Noel and go back on tour with Oasis in 2025. In the UK and around the world, news of an end to the most notorious sibling rivalry since records began is driving a positive meme storm as fans adjust to the new and unfamiliar reality.
Gallagher may have softened a bit since the ’90s, when Oasis was the defining—and defiant—voice of the decade. But one thing he hasn’t softened on is his love for Stone Island, the Italian brand that has been part and parcel of Britain’s urban DNA since the mid-1980s. And as if to underline it, Gallagher is the official frontman for the brand’s latest billboard and media campaign, shot by David Sims. (Art-directed by Ferdinando Verderi, this campaign—which launched in spring of 2024—is an evolution of the iconic creative work made by Nick Griffiths and Simon Foxton in concert with brand director Sabina Rivetti, which was a Stone Island staple from 2008 to 2023.)
Shot against industrial white, Gallagher is dressed in a well-used Stone Island archival anorak, made of cotton canvas coated in thick, matte PVC, that dates to Stone Island’s second or third season. That’s 1983, by the way. Were it not for the obvious signs of wear, Gallagher’s anorak might easily pass for a piece from last winter’s collection. That’s 2023.
Because as a slice of urban mythology, Stone Island has always evolved at its own speed, on its own terms, and with a middle finger perennially cocked at capital “F” fashion. Die-hard fans would argue—and we’re inclined to agree—that it isn’t a fashion brand at all.
Launched in 1982 by streetwear visionary Massimo Osti, Stone Island (along with its progenitor, CP Company, founded in 1971) established a new way of making clothes and an entirely different way of thinking about getting dressed amidst a one-dimensional Italian fashion industry that was all about tailored, patrician cool.
In Europe—and in Italy and the UK particularly—the clothing resonated quickly and deeply on the street. It was expensive and hard to come by, which only added to its cachet. Distinct from mainstream fashion, it was an industrial uniform of sorts, recognisable to those in the know—a hardcore “Stoney” cognoscenti that now, all these years later, ranges from slim 20-year-olds up to paunchy men in their 60s.
Everything for Stone Island is about the product rather than trends. There are two factors that matter: design and textile research. The garments emulate the functionality of military and industrial clothing rather than the predictable suit and tie, and they’re made from highly specialised performance fabrics and finishes dreamed up in-house and unavailable from anyone else.
Since 2020, the 42-year-old brand has been owned by Moncler’s Remo Ruffini, functioning as a separate entity but benefitting from the broader infrastructure and marketing reach of the Moncler group. Creatively, little has changed. Longtime owner Carlo Rivetti, who came on board in the early ’80s, is still chairman of the board, helping preserve the fashion-outsider vibe while cultivating a larger audience, especially in the US. In the campaign, Gallagher is joined by actor Russell Tovey, DJ Peggy Gou and musician Sage Elsesser, suggesting that the brand still has the bona fides to onboard new generations without alienating the diehards.
Read on for Gallagher’s Q&A with the Stoney folks, pulled directly from the new campaign.
Question 21 of 100
What do you collect?
Just souls.
Question 28 of 100
What is your favorite season?
Football season.
Question 29 of 100
What is your favorite time of day?
I get up at four or five in the morning. Then I’m just waiting for something fucking spectacular to happen.
Question 36 of 100
What is your favorite city in the world?
Manchester City. And Manchester the city.
Question 38 of 100
Do you prefer the desert, forest, mountain, or beach?
Any of them as long as there’s a cheeky little bar.
Question 39 of 100
What advice would you give your younger self?
Life’s been great. It’s had its ups and downs. But at the end of the day, you are playing it.
Question 75 of 100
Classic or modern or both?
All this news stuff doesn’t do it for me. It all stems from the past, which is classic.
Question 76 of 100
What do you eat for breakfast?
I have porridge for breakfast, then if I’m feeling really rock ’n’ roll I’ll have some almonds on it and a bit of honey.
Question 80 of 100
What are you grateful for?
Everything. I fucking love being alive. It’s amazing.
Originally published on Esquire UK
Noel Gallagher once claimed you could tell how many drugs Oasis were on by the clothes they wore on stage. The more ridiculous the coats, the greater the cocaine intake.
Liam Gallagher took a different view.
“I’m me in the supermarket,” he said. “The same clothes, the same haircut, the same shades on, when I’m fucking gardening or picking the kids up from school or dropping ’em off. I’m the same, there’s no double-life. I am what I am.”
It wouldn’t be hard to take issue with Gallagher Jnr’s dress sense over the last 30 years—there have been quite a lot of bad clothes, bad haircuts, bad shades and bad gear you’d think twice about wearing to the supermarket, doing the gardening in, let along picking the kids up from school or dropping them off. But it would be a brave soul who’d argue against Liam’s influenced on fashion for the British male.
For a significant swathe of men, the Oasis singer’s mod-adjacent “parka monkey” look has become Route One to effortless cool. Seasons come and seasons go, but there is a corner of an England that will forever be Knebworth, 1996.
And with some judicious editing of three decades worth of Liam’s photographs, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that—yeah, on his good days, Liam looked pretty cool, actually.
He is what he is.
And you can’t really argue with that.
Originally published on Esquire UK
David Fincher’s new film The Killer stars Michael Fassbender as a ruthless hitman with a penchant for process, a drive for revenge and a high threshold for boredom. It’s a stylish movie, as you’d expect from the director of such gloomy noirs as Fight Club (1999), Zodiac (2007) and The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011).
Except maybe when it comes to The Killer’s own wardrobe. As we see our protagonist move from Paris, to the Dominican Republic to New Orleans to Florida and finally New York, his wardrobe is an oddball mix of Hawaiian shirts, sensible slacks, anoraks and bucket hats.
Less John Wick more dad-at-Wickes. That, apparently, was the point.
To tell us more, Cate Adams, costume designer on The Killer, who previously worked with Fincher on the 2017 Netflix series Mindhunter, shared her mood board and inspirations. And helpfully provided actual sources for anyone wanting to ‘Get The Look’—including Fassbender’s bucket hat, shirts and comfy slip-on shoes. Enjoy!
Right from the start he said he wanted him to look like a German tourist in Paris. And he wanted him to look dorky. And not cool. Like he did not want him to look like ‘James Bond/Tom Cruise-in-Collateral’ – he didn’t want anything like that. He was very specific about that. We talked a lot about clothing [The Killer] could take on and off. Everything he has could be purchased from an airport. He doesn’t think a lot about the clothes. But strangely, he has good style.
If you’re in a ‘walking city’ like Paris, there’s a few shops on every block where you could find something [The Killer wears] easily. In the States it’s, like, [mid-range, off-the-peg brand] JoS. A. Bank, Hugo Boss… those brands that have ‘ND’ jackets—nondescript, they don’t have logos on them. JoS. A. Bank is a mens’ store that’s been around forever. They have Oxford shirts. Jackets. Trench coats. My dad actually shops there.
I think that’s open to your interpretation, right? In Paris, when I started doing mood boards, I was, like, ‘Ok, I know David doesn’t want him in black. He doesn’t need to look ‘bad’’. So, I originally had him in the colours that were coming into play for the season—honey colours, tans and browns. I had my crew in every city go around and take pictures of what everyone was wearing. David likes to have mood boards with just one image—instead of using collages, which is what I usually do. And he wanted a chino khaki that was, like, eggshell or cement, so [The Killer] weirdly stands out. So we started with Paris and just played off of that.
My take in Paris is that he is meant to stand out. He’s meant to look weird. ‘What is he wearing? Why is he wearing all these light colours? He’s clearly not from here.’ But no one wants to talk to him.
Yes, it is. I think that’s exactly what we were going for. David had mentioned ‘dad vibes’ early on. Like, dad sneakers. He really wanted Skechers because they’re so universal and the über-dad shoes. We also went to every bucket hat shop that existed in North America. And we finally found one online which is a cotton poly roll-up hat from an army surplus store that comes in packages of 30. The point was it was so nondescript.
Oh, I hadn’t seen that! Isn’t that every costume designer’s dream? If I have people showing up like Michael next Halloween, I will die and go to heaven.
It was not so much the characters, more that I liked the look of them. David had mentioned Le Samouraï to watch, the French film [starring Alain Delon as hitman Jef Costello; 1967]. He wears a trench coat and has a nice hat on. But he didn’t want that [look]. So I went through so many movies. I also watched American Gigolo (1980), because it’s so tonal – that was a big inspiration. I loved Leo in Blood Diamond. If you watch any of David’s movies—and I knew this from Mindhunter—he wants everything to looked lived in and worn and real.
‘Bucket hat’ just played in to the ‘German tourist’. [Fincher] wanted a bucket hat that was waterproof, or water-resistant.
He didn’t want him to have to carry an umbrella. It’s really hard to find a waterproof one that wasn’t black. I found one from a vendor in Thailand that was green. David didn’t want green.
If you Google references for ‘bucket hat’ then Hunter S Thompson is going to be the obvious one. And I found that sketch of the ‘nerdy German tourist’. I thought that was funny.
He’s always wearing bucket hats and oversized windbreakers. It’s, like, ‘Are you kidding?’ You can look at him through the decades and he’s aways wearing something similar.
Um, well, I mean, I think that Oasis is timeless, obviously. I fucking love Liam Gallagher. I figure he’s a douchebag but I thought that documentary [Liam Gallagher: As It Was (2019)] was really well done. I’m sure he’s a complete asshole. But I do love his look. I mean, he was playing Glastonbury and I don’t even think it was raining but he was wearing this, like, ginormous, oversized windbreaker. And I was, like, ‘What is going on? Aren’t you sweating to death?’ But maybe that’s his schtick, you know. He’s trying to burn calories.
Oh! Cool!
‘I don’t give a fuck’, right? Isn’t that Liam? That’s The Killer. There’s nothing in there. He doesn’t care. Couldn’t really care less about what anyone thinks of him. He doesn’t really need anyone to survive. It’s just him. I feel like Liam’s kind of like that, right? He didn’t give a fuck about his brother. He’s, like, ‘I’m the man. I really don’t care about all of you’.
David said at the start that everything had to be functional. So the Barbour jacket is water-resistant. He wears Lululemon. He wears Patagonia as a lightweight knit in Chicago. That had a little bit of cashmere in it—so he can sweat in it. [Fincher] kept saying [technical outwear brand] Ather. Like, Ather was a big thing. We didn’t use it but we definitely shopped it and tried it. So, yeah, everything had to be accessible. Everything had to be ready for any climate. All the layers—you could take them on and off and use them again. A lot of Gap, and then, randomly, Tommy Bahama.
Tommy Bahama is, like, a Key West-Florida-Aloha Hawaiian shirts brand. It’s dad vibes. It’s the almost-retired 55-year-old, upper-middle class man… What he thinks is ‘dressing up’ for vacation. It’s, like, ‘I’m going to get my Hawaiian shirt for vacation and my linen pants, and I’m going to look great at my all-inclusive resort in Mexico or Florida’. That’s what that’s about, basically.
Yes. That’s when we see him pushing a garbage bin into the building. He has a whole rolling rack of ‘disguises’ behind him. So that’s the one time he looks ‘brand new’ and ‘out-of-the-packaging’. And we dyed a belt and a hat to match.
That black look was for the [big set piece] fight scene. So everything is black, techy, zippy—the navy zippies from Lululemon. He’s got different kinds of track pants. He puts on a ski-mask. And it was Michael’s idea to roll it up, fisherman’s-style. So he looks kind of…. trendy? But he’s not meaning to. Really, his whole wardrobe is anything slim-fitting that he could pack in his suitcase. And obviously he didn’t need to iron.
Right!
