Ideas from Massimo Osti

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Both are large, very heavy hardback volumes, lavishly illustrated and featuring high quality photography throughout. Osti put every design and material through rigorous and continual experimentation: under his instruction, his team tested and re-tested every last fiber used through rubber-coating, emery-brushing, resining, siliconing, oil finishing, bonding, and dying (the latter, with the help of in-house chemists). Working intensively with fabric treatments like dyes and stonewashes, he mastered the art of giving clothes an intensely worn, but not destroyed patina. bicolori e molto illustrate con disegni e caratteri originali, prima edizione, in italiano, buone condizioni.

this master of form and function lies in his unique ability to communicate, not through advertising or press releases, but rather through the clothes themselves.This second section closely examines each of Massimo's most important inventions in the world of fabrics, from the epochal industry-shifting intuition of garment dyeing to lesser known early Stone Island fabrics such as JJ23 to the legendary Raso Gommato, Ice Jacket and Reflective, to later high-tech subtleties such as Tecnowool. The material was brought back a couple of time with the last entry in 2012 for a 30th Anniversary jacket, but don’t expect to see a lot of these floating about.

is the definitive look at one of the most influential and secretly revered names in Italian fashion history.The system was inspired by the fastenings on horse riding chaps produces in Italy and Osti's passion for maritime sailing. Garment Dyeing is the process of dying finished pieces, rather than using pre-dyed materials to create garments. For Stone Island, among the first were the Paninari, perhaps the only indigenous Italian subculture. An innovator and creative genius, Massimo Osti’s innovations rewrote the rules of the casual menswear industry and created the fabrics of today.

garments, accessories, lab dips, fabric samples and an extended library of magazine, books and prints. It feels and looks expensive – which it is – so it is a status symbol, but not in a flashy here-today-gone-tomorrow way. For centuries, after the fall of the Roman Empire, we have been a land of little commons and little feuds, and we have always nurtured our genius loci with immense pride, trying to be as different as possible from our neighbours just a few kilometres away. The most important of these characters is Massimo Osti, because he was the one that founded the brand in 1982. Written and edited by Osti’s wife Daniela Facchinato, the book tells the story of the ‘godfather of sportswear’.A cult inspires the notion that the thing you worship is singular,’ says Max Pearmain, ‘and to my eye Osti is one of a kind. After four years in the making, the highly anticipated second edition of Ideas From Massimo Osti has landed at Aphrodite in paperback form. The cult was definitely brought back to Britain by supporters who came in contact with the Paninari in Italy,’ says McLellan. A single module can be worn as a highly water-resistant poncho or, when tied and pegged, can be used as a small shelter.

collaging bits and pieces into wholly new shapes, to really care about flaunting his own lifestyle for promotional reasons or pontificating about fashion with a capital F and hogging the limelight. Jackets made from multiple different materials can be dyed simultaneously as the science behind dyes and how they take to materials had advanced. Ideas from Massimo Osti assembles sketches, photocopies, scraps of fabric, buttons, accessories and images of the celebrities that promoted his creations, from Bono and Madonna to Kevin Costner and Dennis Hopper. It would be hard to find a piece of modern clothing that wasn’t in some way influenced by Massimo Osti.He loved sailing, for instance – it was not by chance that he chose a compass rose as the Stone Island logo – but his passions were also private. In the late 60’s through to the 70’s this was the fashion and garments were often made from tightly cut, unyielding materials. According to Ashley Heath, the editor of Arena Homme+ and The Face, Massimo Osti has been an all-pervading influence on men’s fashion since the Nineties. Throughout his professional life, despite introducing groundbreaking innovations in techniques such as garment dyeing or wool brushing, despite using daring heat-sensitive and highly reflective fabrics, despite turning the humble down jacket into a urban staple when most people were still only using it for skiing, and despite almost immediately gaining a cult following – even if the object of the cult was the product, not its designer – Massimo Osti was never considered as one of the Italian megastars, such as Valentino, Gianni Versace or Gianfranco Ferré. Stone Island evolved into an enduring cult, one still alive today in particular in Britain, thanks to its popularity with football fans.