Ideas from Massimo Osti

Product Information

After four years in the making, the highly anticipated second edition of Ideas From Massimo Osti has landed at Aphrodite in paperback form.

Massimo Osti collected something like 35,000 pieces during his career, and 5,000 of them are still preserved in his archive. Back in the day, though, the idea of a parka that would react to my body heat – changing colour with my emotional reactions – made me freak out. Stone Island has never been silly or predictably fashionable, and the boldness it oozes is palpable. Not only does “Ideas from Massimo Osti” widely and clearly illustrate the stylist and his textile inventions, it also emphasises the unquestionable capacity of this Italian pioneer to influence generations of designers with his visionary power. His garments, as a result, embodied a reassuring brand of straightforwardness – they felt like design objects, not silly fashion pieces.The images that accompany this story, styled by Pearmain and photographed by Alasdair McLellan, are proof of such unadulterated nowness.

Ideas from Massimo Osti tells the story of the birth and development of the formal and textile innovations of the creator of the clothing brands C.

In 1999 she opened the photography gallery "Daniela Facchinato Image Gallery" which immediately became a reference point for contemporary Italian photography.

Still echoing today, Osti proclaimed, “The only impulse which justifies the efforts undertaken over the years, in a constant cycle, is passion.

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. 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. He reinvented the once-codified iconography of parkas, field jackets, riding coats and blousons, which he constantly spliced, dissected, reassembled – but never distorted.