When south London rapper Dave collected his much-deserved Mercury Prize – the award named after a long-defunct telecommunications firm and given to what is deemed to be the year’s best album by a British or Irish artist – last September, he did so in an especially vibrant lime-green sweatsuit by Stone Island. And when, shortly after, the cult Italian sportswear brand released an exclusive capsule collection on MR PORTER, the bulk of said wares came in an also very visually stimulating dusty pink. A bit like putty, an unused Band-Aid or potentially akin to chewed chewing gum, only without losing any of its flavour.

As long-time aficionados of the brand will be able to tell you, Stone Island has a lot of cred when it comes to colour. Indeed, in researching editorial coverage to tie in with the aforementioned capsule, we learnt that the apparel firm has developed some 60,000 hues in its own in-house laboratory since it first launched in 1982.

But Stone Island doesn’t just limit itself to experimenting with colours; the brand also pushes the envelope when it comes to fabrics, with some of its sci-fi materials going on to shape the colour itself. Revered examples tucked away in its archive include the Liquid Reflective Jacket, which is composed from a polymer coated with thousands of glass microspheres, giving the material, as the name suggests, a reflective quality. See also the Ice Jacket, which changes in chromaticity according to the ambient temperature. You could call it having fun with the functional.

In light of all these eye-catching tints, the latest drop from the forward-thinking label could be seen as inconspicuous, and conspicuously so. At which point we would introduce another motif running through Stone Island’s output: a Mr Tom Clancy-level fascination with military hardware. As with much of menswear, which was often road-tested on the battlefield, the allure of armed service is in the brand’s DNA. In fact, its very first products, a series of jackets, were fashioned from army truck tarpaulin.

The new “Ghost Pieces” capsule, then, is built with the art of concealment at its core. Camouflage in that it is designed to blend in rather than employing a variation of the woodland family of prints issued by the US Army, even the signature compass patch on these items is reconfigured to match the colour of the clothing. It’s still strong enough to wear when receiving a music prize, perhaps even a Medal of Honor; stealth stealth, you could call it.

The appreciation for military garb extends beyond this capsule, with the army-green overshirt featured below tapping into brand founder Mr Massimo Osti’s old trips to flea markets, scouting for vintage uniforms. Although in this case, the shell panels point towards the technical fabrics that Stone Island is today famous for.

Of course, the brand isn’t done with bright colours just yet. For those who prefer Splatoon to the Call Of Duty franchise, this lemon-yellow sweater is pretty sweet.