New Balance x Stone Island 1890 — 'Deep Forest' (U1890SI)

What is the New Balance x Stone Island 1890 'Deep Forest'?
The New Balance x Stone Island 1890 'Deep Forest' (style code U1890SI) is a limited collaborative release between New Balance — the Boston-based athletic institution — and Stone Island — the Italian sportswear label founded by Massimo Osti in 1982 and celebrated globally for its experimental approach to fabric treatment, dyeing, and functional design. The 'Deep Forest' colorway applies a deep, saturated forest green across the 1890's multi-material upper, executed with Stone Island's characteristic attention to how color behaves differently across different fabric types and textures. The result is a sneaker that is simultaneously a premium running-heritage object, a Stone Island design statement, and one of the most considered colorway executions in the New Balance x Stone Island collaborative catalog.

Product Specifications

• Silhouette: New Balance 1890 — a premium running-inspired lifestyle sneaker with a refined, relatively low-profile aesthetic compared to bulkier NB running silhouettes; positioned in NB's heritage tier rather than performance tier
• Colorway: Deep Forest — a deep, saturated green spanning the spectrum from dark forest to muted olive depending on material surface and light conditions, applied across multiple upper materials with Stone Island's dyeing expertise
• Upper: Premium multi-material construction combining mesh, suede, and synthetic overlays; Stone Island's characteristic approach to applying consistent color across inherently different fabric types creates tonal variation within a single colorway
• Cushioning: New Balance ABZORB midsole technology — a compression-resistant foam compound that provides superior impact absorption without excessive midsole height; designed for sustained all-day comfort
• Outsole: Durable rubber outsole with multi-surface traction geometry
• Branding: New Balance x Stone Island co-branding; Stone Island compass rose badge on tongue and/or heel; NB 'N' logo integrated into upper overlay structure
• Style Code: U1890SI
• Gender: Unisex
• Edition: Limited New Balance x Stone Island Collaboration

Sizing Guide

Available in US sizes 4 to 11 (Men's and Women's). The New Balance 1890 fits true to size for most wearers. New Balance's sizing is generally consistent across their heritage running silhouettes. Those with wider feet may find sizing up half a size preferable; the 1890's last is medium-width in its standard configuration. For standard-width feet, true to size is the correct choice.

The New Balance 1890: What Is This Silhouette?

The New Balance 1890 occupies a specific position in the New Balance catalog that distinguishes it from both the brand's more commercially ubiquitous silhouettes (the 990, 574, 550) and its more technically extreme running shoes. The 1890 is a heritage running silhouette — its design language references the premium, multi-material upper constructions and cushioning technologies that New Balance developed through the 1980s and 1990s, when the brand was establishing itself as the specialist's choice in running footwear. The shoe's relatively streamlined profile (compared to the chunkier geometries of the 990 series) and its premium material specifications make it a natural candidate for high-fashion collaborative applications: it has the NB heritage credibility that Stone Island's customer expects, without the oversized midsole silhouette that would conflict with Stone Island's more refined, functional aesthetic.

The ABZORB midsole is central to the 1890's character. ABZORB is New Balance's proprietary foam compound — a cellular structure engineered to absorb impact energy at the moment of foot strike without the energy return delay of some other foam systems. It produces a midsole that feels dense and responsive rather than soft and pillowy, which translates to a shoe that wears comfortably for extended periods without the fatigue associated with either overly rigid or overly cushioned platforms. On the 1890, ABZORB is integrated into a midsole of moderate height, giving the shoe a grounded, performance-credible profile that sits naturally between running heritage and lifestyle application.

Stone Island: The Fabric Innovation Context

Stone Island was founded in 1982 by Massimo Osti in Ravarino, Italy, with a founding premise that remains central to the label's identity four decades later: that fabric is the beginning of design, not a support material for it. Osti's initial breakthrough was the application of industrial and military garment-processing techniques — dyeing, coating, thermal treatment, mechanical finishing — to fashion contexts. The label's first collections used fabrics derived from truck tarpaulins and workers' overalls, treated with processes typically applied to functional industrial materials, and the resulting garments had a quality of material intensity that the conventional fashion market had not previously offered.

Stone Island's subsequent decades of development produced an enormous range of proprietary fabric technologies: Ice Jacket (nylon taffeta with a temperature-reactive coating that changes color when exposed to cold), Liquid Reflective (woven with micro-prisms that reflect light in all directions), Lamy (a nylon with a distinctive wrinkled texture created by a specific finishing process), and dozens of others. What unifies these technologies is their common origin in Osti's founding question: what happens to fabric when you subject it to industrial processes that were never designed for fashion? The answers continue to produce materials that are genuinely unlike anything else available in the garment market.

The compass rose badge — Stone Island's primary brand mark, applied to a removable patch on the left sleeve of garments and, in sneaker collaborations, to the tongue or heel — is one of the most recognized symbols in contemporary menswear globally. It signals not just brand affiliation but a specific community membership: the Stone Island customer is typically deeply knowledgeable about the label's history, fabric technologies, and design philosophy. This is a label whose customers memorize garment codes and treatment processes; they are not buying a logo, they are buying evidence of a specific material intelligence.

'Deep Forest': Understanding the Colorway

The 'Deep Forest' colorway name is precise in a way that generic color names typically are not. 'Forest green' as a generic descriptor covers a wide range from bright, saturated greens to dark, almost-black military greens. 'Deep Forest' specifies a green that is deep — dark, saturated, close to the green-black of dense coniferous forest shadow — rather than the brighter, more blue-shifted greens of, say, an open meadow or a tropical leaf. This is a green that reads as serious and considered rather than decorative; it belongs to the same chromatic family as military olive drab and British racing green, but it is darker and more saturated than either.

The multi-material construction of the NB 1890 upper is particularly well-suited to this colorway because different fabric types absorb and reflect the same dye differently. Stone Island's expertise in applying consistent color across inherently different surfaces — a skill developed across decades of garment dyeing where the challenge is getting wool, nylon, and polyester to read as a single coherent color despite their different chemical affinities for dye molecules — means that the Deep Forest green on the mesh upper panels reads slightly differently from the same color on the suede overlays and again differently from the synthetic panels. The result is a shoe that appears to be a single coherent deep green but reveals, on closer inspection, the tonal complexity that comes from applying one color to multiple surfaces. This is exactly the kind of material intelligence that Stone Island's customers are trained to recognize and appreciate.

New Balance x Stone Island: The Collaborative History

The New Balance x Stone Island collaboration is one of the most consistently credible long-running partnerships in the sneaker market, for reasons that have more to do with shared brand values than with hype cycle positioning. Both brands have built their identities around technical specificity rather than lifestyle marketing: New Balance's customer cares about midsole compounds, last width, and upper material specifications; Stone Island's customer cares about fabric treatment codes, dye processes, and garment construction methods. These are complementary forms of product knowledge, not the same form — and their combination produces collaborative releases that reward the deeply informed buyer in two distinct ways simultaneously.

The collaboration's most successful releases have consistently been those where Stone Island's colorway and material sensibility is applied to a New Balance silhouette that already has genuine heritage credibility — not the most commercially recognizable NB silhouette (which would produce a release legible primarily to the hype market), but a silhouette that the knowledgeable NB customer already values independently of its collaborative application. The 1890 is precisely this kind of silhouette: well-regarded by NB enthusiasts for its ABZORB cushioning and premium material specifications, not overexposed in the lifestyle sneaker market, and sufficiently restrained in its profile to work within Stone Island's functional-design aesthetic without visual conflict.

Who Is This Sneaker For?

The New Balance x Stone Island 1890 'Deep Forest' is for the collector who already owns Stone Island garments and wants footwear from the same design philosophy and quality tier. For the New Balance enthusiast who understands what the 1890 is and why ABZORB is the right cushioning platform for this kind of application. For the buyer who has followed the NB x Stone Island collaborative series and recognizes the 1890 as one of the most technically coherent silhouette choices in the series' history. For anyone who finds the Deep Forest colorway — serious, dark, materially complex — more interesting than the brighter, more legible colorways that dominate the lifestyle sneaker market. And for the collector who understands that limited New Balance x Stone Island releases do not come back to retail once they sell through.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is the New Balance x Stone Island 1890 'Deep Forest'?
A: It is a limited unisex collaborative sneaker between New Balance and Stone Island — style code U1890SI — applying Stone Island's Deep Forest colorway and material expertise to the New Balance 1890 silhouette, featuring ABZORB midsole cushioning.

Q: What is the style code?
A: The official style code is U1890SI.

Q: What is ABZORB cushioning?
A: ABZORB is New Balance's proprietary foam compound engineered for impact absorption. It is a compression-resistant cellular foam that feels dense and responsive rather than soft, providing all-day comfort without fatigue. It produces a midsole of moderate height that maintains the 1890's grounded, performance-credible profile.

Q: What is Stone Island known for?
A: Stone Island (founded 1982, Italy) is globally recognized for its experimental approach to fabric treatment, dyeing, and material innovation. The label develops proprietary fabric technologies — garment dyeing across multiple material types, temperature-reactive coatings, reflective weaves — and applies them to functional sportswear. Its compass rose badge is one of the most recognized marks in contemporary menswear.

Q: What does 'Deep Forest' mean as a colorway?
A: Deep Forest is a dark, saturated forest green — closer to the green-black of dense coniferous forest shadow than to brighter or more blue-shifted greens. Applied across the 1890's multi-material upper, Stone Island's dyeing expertise creates tonal variation within the single colorway as the same green reads differently across mesh, suede, and synthetic surfaces.

Q: What is the New Balance 1890 silhouette?
A: The NB 1890 is a heritage running-inspired lifestyle sneaker with a premium multi-material upper and ABZORB midsole. It occupies a position between NB's most commercially recognizable lifestyle silhouettes (574, 550) and its bulkier running platforms (990 series), with a relatively streamlined profile well-suited to high-fashion collaborative applications.

Q: Does the New Balance 1890 run true to size?
A: Yes, true to size for most. The 1890 uses a standard medium-width last consistent with New Balance's heritage running range. Those with wider feet may prefer sizing up half a size.

Q: Is this a limited edition release?
A: Yes. New Balance x Stone Island releases are produced in limited quantities and are not restocked at retail once sold through.