Massimo Osti Studio to Launch at Paris Fashion Week

C.P. Firm, the Italian outerwear model based by legendary graphic designer and trend entrepreneur Massimo Osti, is making ready to launch an experimental label devoted to textile innovation.

The brand new model, Massimo Osti Studio, will reveal its designs (by inventive director Robert Newman) at an occasion on Jan. 17 throughout menswear week in Paris.

Osti, who handed away in 2005, stays an iconic determine within the worlds of sportswear and streetwear. He based a string of Italian sportswear manufacturers together with C.P. Firm and Stone Island through the Seventies and Nineteen Eighties, serving to to popularise methods like display printing and garment dyeing garments. As a former graphic designer, Osti utilized processes from the time, like Xerox and decoupage, to create a singular aesthetic.

As Italy’s burgeoning ready-to-wear ecosystem collided with America’s casualising affect on tradition, Osti’s obsession with textile innovation allowed his manufacturers to place an Italian, artisanal spin on standard menswear archetypes.

Osti’s mixture of graphic logos and patches, a broken-in look and references to army, out of doors and work apparel was adopted as a badge of id for numerous shopper tribes, starting from Milan’s paninari — a Nineteen Eighties road tradition obsessive about designer garments — to soccer hooligans within the UK.

Whereas Stone Island step by step reinforced its presence within the Italian market and overseas, resulting in a €1.2 billion ($1.4 billion) sale to Moncler in late 2020, Osti’s C.P. Firm languished. It underwent a sequence of possession modifications earlier than being relaunched in 2015 by Tristate Holdings, a Hong Kong-based manufacturing and trend licensing group, with management from Massimo Osti’s son Lorenzo.

C.P. Firm’s gross sales and earnings have grown steadily beneath Tristate, which reported round $280 million in income for its owned manufacturers’ and licenses division final yr. (Challenges at different manufacturers together with Spyder, Nautica, and Reebok nonetheless led the division to report a loss.)

Massimo Osti Studio will function the “the lab of C.P.” because the group seeks to bolster its textile innovation observe and reawaken its heritage, Osti mentioned. The hope was to lift consciousness of Osti’s legacy in a approach that didn’t really feel nostalgic, whereas giving the model an opportunity to attach with totally different audiences.

The brand new line might be offered direct-to-consumer on-line and thru activations in partnership with choose retailers relatively than through the corporate’s current distribution community.

“We needed to isolate it, to maintain it pure and clear; to have the room to experiment 360 with out risking confusion about what C.P. Firm is,” mentioned Osti. ”It’s like a sandbox for outerwear innovation.”

The primary drops will embody a product capsule utilizing Alcantara, an ultra-durable materials extra usually seen in vehicles, in addition to collaborations with tool-maker Leatherman and the sailor Alberto Riva.