Massimo Osti
Encyclopedia
Massimo Osti was an Italian garment engineer who invented unique dyeing techniques and materials that changed the clothing and fashion world forever. Osti's products were a mix of his own innovations and design ideas he got from studying military clothing, work- and sportswear. Massimo Osti is also known for the creation of brands such as Stone Island and C.P. Company.
Ongoing research on finishing techniques and materials led to yet another clothing line in 1982: Stone Island
. The first collection was made entirely from a revolutionary new fabric that inspired from the tarps
used by truck drivers. The 'used' look of this highly resistant, two-tone, reversible fabric was obtained through stone washing
. This new collection was so successful that it sold out at every location within 10 days.
In 1984, Osti relinquished his shares of CP Company to GFT, but stayed on as president. He and his team devoted themselves to product development
and communication strategies for the company. In 1985, he became the editor of CP Magazine, an extra-large format catalog/magazine that was sold at newspaper stands. It featured photographs of every garment in the CP Company collections and visualized the C.P. lifestyle perfectly. A circulation of 40,000 copies per collection proved that this unusual advertising tool was indeed effective. It started a trend that would later be followed by many other companies in the industry.
1987 was an important year in Osti's career. He invented and presented Rubber Flax and Rubber Wool – linen and wool with a thin, rubber coating. The rubber made the materials waterproof, improved their resistance and added a totally new look and feel to the garments. In the same year Osti experimented with brushed combed wool for the first time. Today all mills use this procedure for processing wool
en textiles, the same process Osti invented in 1987.
The year also saw the birth of the color changing Ice Jacket. In collaboration with ITS, Osti employed state-of-the-art technological research to create this new fabric which changed color by temperature variations. That same year, his constant commitment to experimentation earned Massimo Osti an invitation to represent the Italian clothing industry at an event commemorating the 750th anniversary of Berlin’s founding, the 150th anniversary of textile manufacturing and his own 15th year in the business. For the occasion, an exhibit was held inside the Reichstag building in Berlin.
In 1988, Massimo Osti’s designs developed a new means of communication with the public through the CP Company sponsorship of the Mille Miglia
race. The company also showed its support of the Rainforest Foundation, the foundation spearheaded by Sting and Raoni, chief of the Kayapo tribe in Amazonia, whose purpose was to raise worldwide awareness of deforestation
in the Amazon rainforest
.
, plus the launch of yet another iconic garment within the Stone Island
line: the Reflective Jacket. This jacket was made from an innovative material, which was the fruit of technological research conducted in Japan. The material combined waterproof fabric with a very thin layer of glass microspheres, which reflected even the weakest light sources with astonishing effectiveness.
In 1993, a partnership with Allegri gave rise to Left Hand. This new brand was characterized by another exclusive material, a non-woven fabric made from pressed polyester
and nylon
fibers which, like felt
, could be used with raw edge stitching. The following year, Osti founded Massimo Osti Production, a company that would reap the benefits of the experience and successes accrued from 20 years’ worth of formal and technical innovations. In 1995, the ST 95 line was launched and in 1996, Osti began a collaboration with Superga, which consisted in designing a collection of image-defining garments.
Just two years later in 1998, a new company was founded to produce and distribute the OM Project brand, the collaboration with the Frattini Group. This new line of clothing would also be characterized by the use of innovative fabrics:
In 1999, Massimo Osti began the collaboration with Dockers
Europe to design a new line of technical pants called Equipment for Legs. Of the technical materials used in this collection, a special blend of Kevlar
stood out in particular; its increased softness and functionality made it appropriate to its application in garment production.
Created in 2000 thanks to a collaboration with Levi’s, it offered a vast array of high performance technical outerwear. This collection was then supplemented by the ICD+ line which, thanks to an agreement with Philips
, featured outwear garments which came equipped with a cell phone, mp3 player, and accompanying headphones and microphone which were all wired to the garment itself.
Massimo Osti died in 2005 and his legacy lives on today through the Massimo Osti Archive, a textile archive which includes 5,000 garments and over 50,000 fabric samples from approximately 300 textile mills and garment finishing companies from around the world.
-based company commissioned Massimo Osti to design printed T-shirts, something he had never done before. At the age of 25, Osti was in close contact with the social and artistic movements of the time and profoundly aware of the changes taking place in society. At the time of his first forays into the world of fashion, Osti’s background in advertising led him to use his graphics know-how as a starting point for tackling his first challenges. “For these T-shirts I used processes for printing on paper to get the finished result, techniques like silkscreen, placed prints, four-process printing, photocopy, etc. It was the first time anything like that was done in Italy. I remember that I had to silkscreen the first T-shirts myself before convincing the technician to do them"Garment dying, 1979: “I discovered that two different materials absorbed and reacted differently to the dye when dyed simultaneously, thereby creating interesting ‘tone-on-tone’ effects.” This is the basis of garment dying, a process that revolutionized the entire industry at the time, both because of the unusual look it produced and because of the significant decrease in costs it represented.
Main characteristics: each garment is dyed, instead of the materials they were made of. Interesting ‘tone-on-tone’ effects, and simplification of dyeing process.
and wool
and granted them a new look and texture, allowing them to drape and fall differently. The special rubber coating not only enhanced their natural characteristics, but also grants increased functionality, such as resistance to water and allows them to remain adaptable to patterns.
Main characteristics: classic materials looked renewed and responded in a new way to wear; also they became more weatherproof.
Main characteristics: jacket changes color by temperature variation. E.g.: pink to grey.
Key-item: First ICE Jacket 1991
and nylon fibers. The pressing is a traditional technique, originally used to make paper. This process grants the fabric an unmistakable “deerskin” hand and excellent breath ability.
Main characteristics: natural deerskin look, but warmer feel.
C.P. Baby (1978–1993)
C.P. Company (1978–1994)
Boneville (1981–1993)
Stone Island (1982–1995)
C.P. Collection (1987–1991)
Left Hand (1993–1999)
Valdemarca (1994–1995)
Production (1995–1998)
St 95 (1996–1998)
Superga (1997–1998)
Equip. For Legs (1999–2000)
Om Project (1999 - 1999)
Icd/Icd+ ( 2000 - 2000)
Mo Double Use ( 2003–2005)
Alterego (2004–2005)
Textile innovations by Massimo Osti
Early years
Massimo Osti was born and raised in Bologna, Italy. He became a graphic designer and worked in the advertising business. His career in the fashion industry began in the early 1970s, when he designed a T-shirt collection featuring placed prints. He was the first to use new techniques like the four-color process and silkscreen which are used for producing T-shirt. Following the success of this first T-shirt collection, he accepted the offer to design a complete Men's collection and became an equity partner in the company he would name 'Chester Perry' (later renamed the 'C.P. Company').1980s
During this period, Osti laid the foundations for a creative philosophy entirely based on experimentation. The first innovation he would be responsible for in the clothing industry was garment dyeing, a process that completely revolutionized the field. It was based upon the concept of different materials in finished garments reacting differently to the same dye bath. Osti discovered that garment dying creates interesting tone-on-tone effects. This particular dyeing technique became typical for Osti's C.P. Company. In 1981, he launched 'Boneville', a new brand alongside the existing CP Company and CP Company Baby collections.Ongoing research on finishing techniques and materials led to yet another clothing line in 1982: Stone Island
Stone Island
Stone Island is an Italian Designer brand from Sportswear Company based in Bologna. The label was set up by Italian designer Massimo Osti in 1982 as a secondary line or diffusion collection of his main C.P Company label...
. The first collection was made entirely from a revolutionary new fabric that inspired from the tarps
Tarpaulin
A tarpaulin, colloquially tarp, is a large sheet of strong, flexible, water-resistant or waterproof material, often cloth such as canvas or polyester coated with urethane, or made of plastics such as polyethylene. In some places such as Australia, and in military slang, a tarp may be known as a...
used by truck drivers. The 'used' look of this highly resistant, two-tone, reversible fabric was obtained through stone washing
Stone washing
Stone washing is a textile manufacturing process used to give a newly manufactured cloth garment a worn-out appearance. Stone-washing also helps to increase the softness and flexibility of otherwise stiff and rigid fabrics such as canvas and denim....
. This new collection was so successful that it sold out at every location within 10 days.
In 1984, Osti relinquished his shares of CP Company to GFT, but stayed on as president. He and his team devoted themselves to product development
New product development
In business and engineering, new product development is the term used to describe the complete process of bringing a new product to market. A product is a set of benefits offered for exchange and can be tangible or intangible...
and communication strategies for the company. In 1985, he became the editor of CP Magazine, an extra-large format catalog/magazine that was sold at newspaper stands. It featured photographs of every garment in the CP Company collections and visualized the C.P. lifestyle perfectly. A circulation of 40,000 copies per collection proved that this unusual advertising tool was indeed effective. It started a trend that would later be followed by many other companies in the industry.
1987 was an important year in Osti's career. He invented and presented Rubber Flax and Rubber Wool – linen and wool with a thin, rubber coating. The rubber made the materials waterproof, improved their resistance and added a totally new look and feel to the garments. In the same year Osti experimented with brushed combed wool for the first time. Today all mills use this procedure for processing wool
Wool
Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....
en textiles, the same process Osti invented in 1987.
The year also saw the birth of the color changing Ice Jacket. In collaboration with ITS, Osti employed state-of-the-art technological research to create this new fabric which changed color by temperature variations. That same year, his constant commitment to experimentation earned Massimo Osti an invitation to represent the Italian clothing industry at an event commemorating the 750th anniversary of Berlin’s founding, the 150th anniversary of textile manufacturing and his own 15th year in the business. For the occasion, an exhibit was held inside the Reichstag building in Berlin.
In 1988, Massimo Osti’s designs developed a new means of communication with the public through the CP Company sponsorship of the Mille Miglia
Mille Miglia
The Mille Miglia was an open-road endurance race which took place in Italy twenty-four times from 1927 to 1957 ....
race. The company also showed its support of the Rainforest Foundation, the foundation spearheaded by Sting and Raoni, chief of the Kayapo tribe in Amazonia, whose purpose was to raise worldwide awareness of deforestation
Deforestation
Deforestation is the removal of a forest or stand of trees where the land is thereafter converted to a nonforest use. Examples of deforestation include conversion of forestland to farms, ranches, or urban use....
in the Amazon rainforest
Amazon Rainforest
The Amazon Rainforest , also known in English as Amazonia or the Amazon Jungle, is a moist broadleaf forest that covers most of the Amazon Basin of South America...
.
1990s
1991 marked the opening of a CP store in New York’s historical Flatiron BuildingFlatiron Building
The Flatiron Building, or Fuller Building, as it was originally called, is located at 175 Fifth Avenue in the borough of Manhattan, New York City and is considered to be a groundbreaking skyscraper. Upon completion in 1902 it was one of the tallest buildings in the city and the only skyscraper...
, plus the launch of yet another iconic garment within the Stone Island
Stone Island
Stone Island is an Italian Designer brand from Sportswear Company based in Bologna. The label was set up by Italian designer Massimo Osti in 1982 as a secondary line or diffusion collection of his main C.P Company label...
line: the Reflective Jacket. This jacket was made from an innovative material, which was the fruit of technological research conducted in Japan. The material combined waterproof fabric with a very thin layer of glass microspheres, which reflected even the weakest light sources with astonishing effectiveness.
In 1993, a partnership with Allegri gave rise to Left Hand. This new brand was characterized by another exclusive material, a non-woven fabric made from pressed polyester
Polyester
Polyester is a category of polymers which contain the ester functional group in their main chain. Although there are many polyesters, the term "polyester" as a specific material most commonly refers to polyethylene terephthalate...
and nylon
Nylon
Nylon is a generic designation for a family of synthetic polymers known generically as polyamides, first produced on February 28, 1935, by Wallace Carothers at DuPont's research facility at the DuPont Experimental Station...
fibers which, like felt
Felt
Felt is a non-woven cloth that is produced by matting, condensing and pressing woollen fibres. While some types of felt are very soft, some are tough enough to form construction materials. Felt can be of any colour, and made into any shape or size....
, could be used with raw edge stitching. The following year, Osti founded Massimo Osti Production, a company that would reap the benefits of the experience and successes accrued from 20 years’ worth of formal and technical innovations. In 1995, the ST 95 line was launched and in 1996, Osti began a collaboration with Superga, which consisted in designing a collection of image-defining garments.
Just two years later in 1998, a new company was founded to produce and distribute the OM Project brand, the collaboration with the Frattini Group. This new line of clothing would also be characterized by the use of innovative fabrics:
- Electric-j- a highly resistant material made of polyester and copper fibers
- Cool Cotton- whose natural look is derived from its cotton component while its other component
- Cool max- a hollow fiber that absorbs bodily moisture and wicks it outwards
- Mag Defender- a canvas made of polyester and carbon fibers whose highly resistant weave shields its wearer from magnetic fields
- Steel, this “urban armor” features a nylon canvas which is woven with twisted cotton and stainless steel, making it highly resistant to cuts and tears.
In 1999, Massimo Osti began the collaboration with Dockers
Dockers
Dockers is a brand of khaki garments from Levi Strauss & Co.Levi Strauss & Co., then specialized in denim, introduced the Dockers brand in 1986. Dockers became a leading brand of business casual clothing for men led by Bob Siegel. In 1987, Dockers introduced a women's line...
Europe to design a new line of technical pants called Equipment for Legs. Of the technical materials used in this collection, a special blend of Kevlar
Kevlar
Kevlar is the registered trademark for a para-aramid synthetic fiber, related to other aramids such as Nomex and Technora. Developed at DuPont in 1965, this high strength material was first commercially used in the early 1970s as a replacement for steel in racing tires...
stood out in particular; its increased softness and functionality made it appropriate to its application in garment production.
2000–present
Among Osti’s last projects was the ICD line.Created in 2000 thanks to a collaboration with Levi’s, it offered a vast array of high performance technical outerwear. This collection was then supplemented by the ICD+ line which, thanks to an agreement with Philips
Philips
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....
, featured outwear garments which came equipped with a cell phone, mp3 player, and accompanying headphones and microphone which were all wired to the garment itself.
Massimo Osti died in 2005 and his legacy lives on today through the Massimo Osti Archive, a textile archive which includes 5,000 garments and over 50,000 fabric samples from approximately 300 textile mills and garment finishing companies from around the world.
Four-process printing on fabric
1970: a BolognaBologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
-based company commissioned Massimo Osti to design printed T-shirts, something he had never done before. At the age of 25, Osti was in close contact with the social and artistic movements of the time and profoundly aware of the changes taking place in society. At the time of his first forays into the world of fashion, Osti’s background in advertising led him to use his graphics know-how as a starting point for tackling his first challenges. “For these T-shirts I used processes for printing on paper to get the finished result, techniques like silkscreen, placed prints, four-process printing, photocopy, etc. It was the first time anything like that was done in Italy. I remember that I had to silkscreen the first T-shirts myself before convincing the technician to do them"Garment dying, 1979: “I discovered that two different materials absorbed and reacted differently to the dye when dyed simultaneously, thereby creating interesting ‘tone-on-tone’ effects.” This is the basis of garment dying, a process that revolutionized the entire industry at the time, both because of the unusual look it produced and because of the significant decrease in costs it represented.
Main characteristics: each garment is dyed, instead of the materials they were made of. Interesting ‘tone-on-tone’ effects, and simplification of dyeing process.
Brushed wool
1987: Osti took this special process, which was originally used on cotton, and experimented with it on wool until he refined the procedure through research and adapted it specifically to this noble fiber, revolutionizing the industry.Rubber flax and rubber wool
1987: these materials, created by Osti, became very popular in the textile industry. They took noble and traditional fabrics like linenLinen
Linen is a textile made from the fibers of the flax plant, Linum usitatissimum. Linen is labor-intensive to manufacture, but when it is made into garments, it is valued for its exceptional coolness and freshness in hot weather....
and wool
Wool
Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....
and granted them a new look and texture, allowing them to drape and fall differently. The special rubber coating not only enhanced their natural characteristics, but also grants increased functionality, such as resistance to water and allows them to remain adaptable to patterns.
Main characteristics: classic materials looked renewed and responded in a new way to wear; also they became more weatherproof.
Ice jacket
1991: A jacket made of a revolutionary material that changes color with temperature variations due to its special chemical composition. The “Ice Jacket” is also highly waterproof and windproof.Main characteristics: jacket changes color by temperature variation. E.g.: pink to grey.
Key-item: First ICE Jacket 1991
Micro
1992: this fabric was first presented in the LEFT HAND collection and is made of pressed microfiberMicrofiber
Microfiber or microfibre refers to synthetic fibers that measure less than one denier. The most common types of microfibers are made from polyesters, polyamides , and or a conjugation of polyester and polyamide.Microfiber is used to make non-woven, woven and knitted textiles...
and nylon fibers. The pressing is a traditional technique, originally used to make paper. This process grants the fabric an unmistakable “deerskin” hand and excellent breath ability.
Main characteristics: natural deerskin look, but warmer feel.
Thermojoint
1993: this revolutionary material was also used in the LEFT HAND collection. Its main characteristics are total resistance to water and wear and up to 80% protection from nuclear radiation.Technowool
1995: used for the first time in the F/W 1996 collection by “Massimo Osti Production,” this combination of wool and nylon jersey is wear-resistant and preserves the breathability, naturalness and durability of wool.Collections
Chester Perry (1971–1977)C.P. Baby (1978–1993)
C.P. Company (1978–1994)
Boneville (1981–1993)
Stone Island (1982–1995)
C.P. Collection (1987–1991)
Left Hand (1993–1999)
Valdemarca (1994–1995)
Production (1995–1998)
St 95 (1996–1998)
Superga (1997–1998)
Equip. For Legs (1999–2000)
Om Project (1999 - 1999)
Icd/Icd+ ( 2000 - 2000)
Mo Double Use ( 2003–2005)
Alterego (2004–2005)
Textile innovations by Massimo Osti