In 1975 Massimo Osti, a young graphic designer from Bologna who would go on to be recognized as the “godfather of urban sportswear”, changed the name of his brand Chester Perry, famous for its screen printed t-shirts, to C.P. This drier, more mature name inaugurated one of the most explosive and influential bursts of creativity in the history of modern Italian fashion and would quickly make C.P. C
ompany the essential brand of choice for Italian intellectuals and artists. Over the next 20 years - until he left the brand in 1994 - Massimo Osti would combine archival research into the origins of functional menswear (his 35 000 piece archive of vintage military, work and sportswear was amongst the largest in the world) with unparalleled Italian fabric innovation, most notably of all the garment dyeing technique, to invent an entirely new genre of menswear. Company field jacket, carpenter’s jacket, traditional London trench or riding coat would, at first glance, appear almost identical to its original vintage source of inspiration, but a closer inspection revealed that every last detail, from the way the fabric had been waterproofed, to it shades of khaki or brown, to the vegetal ivory used on the buttons or the lenses inserted in its hood, had been obsessively tweaked using cutting-edge manufacturing techniques. The result was a piece of clothing which immediately felt comfortable and easy-to-wear, like you’d always owned it, which allowed you to move seamlessly and discretely across the sprawling city, without drawing excessive attention to yourself, , but whose details communicated – to those sensitive enough to notice them – a non-conformist, even ironic, attitude to the traditional canons of menswear. This hybridization of functional menswear and Italian fabric innovation is the origin of C.P. Company (and the origin of the entire school of Italian urban sportswear) and still today remains the basis of every piece of clothing to carry the C.P.
