DEEPER THREADS — KEEPING MASSIMO OSTI’S LEGACY ALIVE

Tucked away on an unassuming street in the Italian city Bologna, sits a storied archive that paints a picture of ingenuity, resourcefulness and above all, defiance. Walk through a small office, littered with samples, and you end up in a room, longer than it is wide, home to thousands of products embellished with the famed Badge of Stone Island or Goggles of C.P. Company, that the late Massimo Osti built legend around. Whether in the streets of the fashion centre that is Milan, or thousands of kilometres away in Liverpool, there’s a lore around Massimo Osti and his creations that his son Lorenzo, his daughter Agata and many others are doing a great job of keeping alive.

With no doubt of his impact on the world of technical sportswear, it couldn’t have been imagined how much he’d achieve way back in 1971 when he founded C.P. Company. “He was successful because his work unintentionally was part of something larger than him at the time,” Lorenzo reveals. This movement away from more structured ways of dressing, and a societal rejection of the status quo married nicely with Massimo’s early designs, which often took war-adjacent items and placed them within the world of fashion. The best example of this? The famed goggles of the C.P. Company brand, that were taken straight from the eyelets of a gas mark, reimagined on a more casual and sporty outfit, which was reflective of the direction fashion was moving towards.

Although simply a pursuit of how all of these different worlds Massimo Osti was interested in could collide, his clothing became a tool – synonymous with political commentary that still felt appropriate for a generation that hadn’t quite recovered from the effects of the War.

Whilst Agata, who manages the archive, weaves in and out of us, making sure everything is in order, Massimo floats around recanting stories of his Dad’s earliest techniques, pulling out items at will to make his points tangible. We explore the four pillars that define Massimo Osti’s legacy. Initially graphic design – which often meant playing with perception, creating products that would appear to be made of a certain material due to the graphic print placed upon them. Lorenzo shows us a quasi-knitted jumper that is actually simply just a more standard material, but appears stitched due to the print laid on it. The next pillar for Massimo was product dyeing, and is potentially one of the most defining aspects of his career. Understanding how different products reacted to different dyes at different temperatures meant that Massimo undoubtedly revolutionised the industry, and made products like none other. Rather than pull out products, Lorenzo shows us small fabric samples that detail the effects of the plethora of processes that effectively made Massimo Osti’s way of dyeing an industry standard, as not only more interesting, it was also much more efficient. “It is still one of the things that C.P. Company and Massimo Osti studio does better than anybody else,” says Lorenzo. Next came garment design and fabric innovation, which exist as two different pillars, but marry together importantly as they not only once again redefined the industry, taking products that had very silhouetted and specific purposes, and reimagining that to display them in a completely different light.

Additionally, these last two pillars were the foundation of Stone Island, which, to put it simply, was the rain at the end of a rainbow. “My father loved the way the sun would dye the material on trucks and tents, so he found a company that sold old tents and bought them all,” begins Lorenzo. After several experimentations, Massimo landed at a place he was happy and ready to release to the world, previewing a new dawn for the C.P. Company brand. “It was a disaster,” laughs Lorenzo. “People returned the clothes at such high rates because they just didn’t understand it.” But rather than be discouraged, Massimo saw it as an opportunity to continue the experiments, just under a different entity. Enter Stone Island.

Now two brands that still crossover culturally, the main separating point between the two was that Stone Island was for more daring fabric innovations, whilst C.P. Company, with an already established customer base, was for more classical designs – ones the consumers knew and loved.

We spend a lot of time discussing the tumultuous nature of Massimo Osti’s career, and when he left CP in 1993, beginning Massimo Osti Production, it was the first time he showed himself to the world, after “hiding behind Stone [Island] and C.P.”. “He liked it because it had one clear concept,” says Lorenzo. Unlike the days of Stone Island and C.P. Company, there was a unidirectional movement with the brand, that centred itself primarily around fabric innovation. “One collection. One brand. One fabric.” With the one focus, Massimo powered on, and not without troubles, enjoyed several collections, and collaborations with brands such as Levi’s – his first exploration into making more experimental bottoms.

“[In 2005] My Father passed away and we had always been separated from his work – but we had to do something. We owed it to him,” says Lorenzo. After difficulties with the business, that was largely successful but fell victim to an internal scam, Massimo Osti passed away in 2005, but that is far from the end of his story. After beginning the archive and publishing a book that celebrated his father’s work, Lorenzo, Agata and others began to question what a future looked like for their father’s legacy. “The thing is, we were always looking in the past,” begins Lorenzo, picking up garments from different decades of his father’s legacy “But this had nothing to do with this which had nothing to do with that. My Dad was always trying to move forward.”

Forward they marched, ideating around a new chapter in the story of Massimo Osti. Not without their difficulties though, their removal from their father’s career meant none of them had desired to pursue fashion entirely. “That was the challenge. We’re not designers, me and my sister are not my Dad, but the best thing we realised we can do is push the boundaries in the same way he did.” On the other hand, the brand could serve as a laboratory, once again allowing them to take risks and actually present them to the market – without having the responsibility attached to C.P. Company which has continued to grow from strength to strength.

This year has been a year of small beginnings for Massimo Osti Studio, the latest episode in fashion influenced by the bravery of Massimo Osti himself. “Starting from year zero” the company has begun right from the beginning, moving forward slowly but steadily, releasing seven chapters that once again look to push the dial, as Massimo did for decades. First came Alcantara, a study into new materials and panelling, then Trama 3D, which continued innovation on new Jacquard techniques. Third was tecnomesh, which looked back to look forward, heavily referencing the richness of the archive. After that came a utility collaboration with Leatherman, extending the exploration into multi-functional design. The next chapter was a homage to Massimo’s love for the sea, a sailing collaboration with Alberto Riva.

The latest chapter now available is one that I got to catch the launch of whilst in Bologna, bringing in figureheads from all corners of the city as it celebrated two of their most proud products. The Massimo Osti and Andrea Pazienza collaboration honours two friends who trailblazed paths in Fashion and Art, and although they both are no more, the collab breathes life into their legacy.

It’s an exciting time at the Massimo Osti Studio, and now looking into the future the ambition is simply to stay small, whilst expanding into the world of wholesale to build a stronger connection to the brand through “feeling the product”.