HERITAGE & PROGRESSION WITH C.P. COMPANY’S LORENZO OSTI & PAUL HARVEY

This quote from the legendary, industry-shifting Massimo Osti is important in framing not only the context of C.P. Company in the modern day, but the wider landscape of garments in general. His non-conformist approach to product — arriving as an outsider from his graphic design roots — threw out the rulebook and replaced it with his very own, one which viewed the movement into uncharted territory as paramount.

Now, in excess of five decades of C.P. Company’s existence, the momentum and relevance of the label is more palpable than ever, all thanks to the same willingness to step into the unknown established by its visionary founder. It represents one of the definitive figures in premium Italian sportswear, blending the codes of military, workwear and sportswear and packaging it in a way that resonates with the familiar and propels you into the unknown. At the helm of this is the label’s president Lorenzo Osti, its Lead Designer Paul Harvey and the tight-knit team of innovators behind the scenes at C.P. Company, all of whom are continuing with the same trailblazing vision established by Massimo Osti in the brand’s formative years.

In light of that — and to mark our debut collaboration with the legendary brand, dubbed “Adapt” — we visited C.P. Company’s R&D unit in Northeast Italy to sit down with Lorenzo Osti and Paul Harvey, lifting the lid on the brand’s legendary heritage, its transformative approach to fabrics and the importance of collaborations in the modern day.

First of all, can you speak about your individual roles at C.P. Company?  

Paul: He’s the boss, I’m one of the designers.

Lorenzo: *laughing* It’s definitely more than that. I’m the President of C.P. Company and, not by chance, also the son of the founder. I take care of the brand strategy and a lot of daily operational things, almost everything except product, which is Paul’s realm.

Paul: Yeah, so I’m one of the designers, there are others. My daily roles are to design the collections, to make sure things all work together and that everyone involved is on the same track.

Lorenzo: Paul is very humble, he’s actually the Lead Designer and he creates all of the concepts, besides overseeing all of the work and the collections.

Paul: There are lots of different facets, but mainly, my job, together with Stefano, is to ensure everybody is on the same track.

C.P. Company’s approach to materials has always been rooted in the metamorphosis of what is readily available, something which continues to this very day. Can you speak about this transformative approach to fabrics and its importance for C.P. Company?  

Paul: I think it can be traced back to the very beginning, when C.P. Company was starting out, so legend says, and overdyeing surplus American parkas. If you wanted a green one, that was fine, but if you wanted a different colour, you couldn’t have it. If you start from a military green, then you’re only going to get black, or a very dark blue, but that’s where it started from. That is built into almost everything that C.P. Company does, as our starting point is always “okay, can we dye it?”. Then there's the question of whether we can construct fabrics in a certain way, and C.P. Company was one of the very first to start looking at military fabrics and asking, “okay, can we have the same nylon that bomber jackets are made out of?”, or “can we have the cotton-nylon gabardine they use to make parkas out of?”. At the time, these fabrics simply weren’t available in Italy — we’re talking a long time ago. So the thought was that we can construct these fabrics and use them in the colours we want, being able to freely dye them without being limited to the military colours available.

From then, it builds on to, “okay, I really like this fabric, I like the face of it, but it’s a little bit too light. How can I make it heavier? Can I bind it together with something else?”. So that brings in another idea. All of the time, we work with these three different parentheses: we can have our own fabrics woven, we can dye fabrics that are available and we can also bond different fabrics together to make something new. Those are the three key ingredients, and if you mix them all together, you get what we do.

C.P. Company’s mantra has always been “create what does not yet exist”, something established by the pioneering Massimo Osti. How does C.P. Company go about maintaining this constant pursuit of the unknown season after season?

Paul: It’s all about sticking to that, “create what does not yet exist”, if someone has done it already, then we shouldn’t do it. We’re a very strong advocate of that idea and we always have been — maybe to an extreme. A part of the job as a designer is to be innovative and original, as well as balancing this with what the company is doing — what can be produced, when we’re going to deliver it, whether it fits in the price, there are loads of different filters that are applied to it. But you have to start from that basis, that we really want to try and do something that hasn’t been done before.

C.P. Company is a brand with such a legendary heritage filled with iconic design codes. How do you go about honouring these while also ensuring the brand’s continual progressiveness?

Paul: This is a question of respecting the DNA of C.P. Company. It’s something we try to do all of the time, we often say “okay, C.P. Company can do this”, or “okay, this is very C.P. Company”. That’s about knowing the brand and knowing what it stands for, it’s probably the most difficult bit of it. It’s very, very easy to go off the tracks, and C.P. Company has done so in its history, by people not respecting what the brand is or what it should be. As I said before, my job, principally, is to try and keep C.P. Company on those tracks. Trouble is, one of the most difficult things is that you have to know where the tracks are, and unfortunately there’s not a guidebook, it’s something you know.  

When looking to archival designs, what I tend to do is look for ideas, that’s the important thing. We try not to directly copy a military garment, rather we delve into why certain things have been done or how things work which can act as the springboard for ideas. Sometimes you can go back to a garment two or three different times, thinking “oh, that’s cute, that’s a really nice idea as well. How can we develop this further?”.

Beyond just material innovation, graphics are also something integral to C.P. Company, again kickstarted by the late Massimo Osti and his history in graphic design. Your “Artisanal Prints” capsule can be said to be a nod to this. How important are these graphics to the visual language of C.P. Company?

Lorenzo:  It was important for my father as, let’s be frank, it was the only way he could have approached this industry. This is what he was able to do, creating graphics. Basically, he replaced paper with fabrics and started to test on fabrics the paper techniques. This approach is part of the brand’s DNA, with a lot of tests and pieces really built around the graphic element throughout the years. Correct me if I’m wrong, Paul, but I think it hasn’t always been like this in all of the history of C.P. Company, but recently we have revisited it again. This season, the “Artisanal Print” collection with Stamperia Marchi is also an homage of our land and also a place where you, Paul, live.

Paul: Yeah, it’s literally 50 yards down the road from where I live, so it was handy. What we were trying to do with Stamperia Marchi is get back to the idea of made in Italy, and I think C.P. Company has always been really into crafts. It was a way of spotlighting handmade stuff in Italy, talking about the craft industry that still exists here, albeit in small numbers. There were various factors here which all worked together, and it just so happened to be down the road from me which made things a lot easier. But that sort of print shop there are very, very few left in Italy, around ten in total.

Collaborations — like C.P. Company’s debut partnership with SneakersbeShops, dubbed “Adapt” — play an important role for the brand and its contemporary output. How do you go about selecting collaborative partners, and can you discuss their importance for the brand?

Lorenzo: Collaborations are a very important part of our contemporary brand strategy, for basically two reasons. First of all, they allow you to have someone else’s eyes on you and renew yourself, enabling you to look at what you do from a different perspective. So this definitely brings a value. Also, more from a marketing perspective, it allows you to tap into different communities and different audiences that maybe didn’t know you, but since you are working with the brands they adopt, it allows you to show your values of what you do. Regarding the way we select collaborative partners — we started late, as we acquired the brand later and didn’t want to jump into collaborations for the sake of it — but the question of how we select was one of the first. It actually came about pretty naturally — it’s about connection. Sometimes it’s personal, where we find people that we really like and we enjoy working with, and other times it’s about a having a shared approach in different fields. It can also be cultural, where although we are different brands, we share similar cultural values. Where there is this kind of connection, I think partnerships work well. Sometimes, collaborations can just be marketing driven and don’t really work — this is what we avoid.

SneakersbeShops: So there always has to be an element of authenticity and connection between brand values?

Lorenzo: Yes, I would say it is about connection more than anything. We’ve made collaborative collections with brands that really have nothing to do with us, but because the people were nice and we had that connection, we really enjoyed making it together. If you love what you are doing while you do it, then the outcome will most likely be good.

Paul: I agree with Lorenzo, I think the cultural thing is really quite important. For us, it’s interesting as it forces you to work and think in a different way, which is good. You create a different box and say, “okay, today we’re going to play within this box, which is different than the usual one”. Usually, the results are really interesting. It really does work, looking at the collaborations we’ve done recently and together with you guys as well. What’s really nice about it is that collaborations are much smaller — usually around five to ten pieces — so there is so much concentration on that, rather than, say, the 300-plus pieces in a collection.

Throughout the decades since C.P. Company was founded, there have been various experimental collections — ranging from garments framed within a societal context to hyper-experimental, dual-purpose creations — something which continues today with the Metropolis Series. How important are these collections as a vehicle for the constant pursuit of the innovative?   

Paul: From my point of view, the thing about these capsule collections is that they work very much in a similar way, and are the forerunner to, collabs. You work in this different playing field in different rules — they make you think in a different way. Any time you give yourself constraints, then that forces you to think in a different way which makes things very interesting.

Lorenzo: I totally agree. You don’t have this freedom in the main collection, you have to deliver 300 styles and C.P. has an identity. Of course, you can experiment, but you cannot, from season to season, change everything. So they represent a sandbox to explore ideas and concepts, which are stimulating and work very well. With Metropolis, for example, we move away from one of the core pillars of C.P. Company which is garment dyeing, and we experiment with performance fabrics without the idea of dyeing. It’s still C.P. Company, but it cannot be done in the full collection as we will lose that identity.

Paul: Yeah, it makes things interesting because you have to think in a different way. The Metropolis thing happened because we picked up a Metropolis jacket 20 years after it debuted, with the thought of “let’s do something different”. We have been doing the Mille, or the Goggle Jacket, since the early days, so we thought let’s do something different and Lorenzo said let’s introduce the Metropolis Series. So we have this part inside of a collection that dances to another tune.

SneakersbeShops: Again, it comes back to looking at the brand’s heritage. As you said, you found the Metropolis Jacket and it sparked this idea, one where you move into a new direction and territory.

Paul: Yeah, it’s a bit more difficult with Metropolis as you only have one jacket, so we spent a year figuring out what to do with it, but then it sort of clicked — we established what the playing field was.    

Lorenzo: There is a fun fact about the original Metropolis jacket — it worked very well back in 2000 when Moreno launched it, despite being totally different from C.P. Company at that time. It worked because it connected with people in the context of that historical moment, ahead of the year 2000 and the fear and curiosity of the new Millennium. When we picked it back up 20 years later, it was December 2019 and a jacket with a mask in the hood came just before COVID broke out, so though by chance, it was very relevant.

Paul: You could say it was luck, but then we were really quite worried about whether we should have been doing it.

Lorenzo: Yes, we were scared because it seemed like it was us profiteering, but it was all pure coincidence.

Paul: We work 18 months ahead, so there was no way we’d know this was going to happen.

For decades now, C.P. Company has represented a subcultural icon, especially in the UK where the brand symbolises a uniform for many. Why do you think, both past and present, that C.P. Company resonates so strongly on this level?

Lorenzo: It’s a very good question, and I spend a lot of time thinking about it. As Paul previously said, at some time in its history C.P. Company lost its track, I think it’s not merely a product thing, but a disconnect from the people following it. Maybe it betrayed its DNA, or maybe it lost its connection. It’s interesting and not an easy answer, because in its history, C.P. Company has connected with many subcultures, some very different from one and other. Let’s start in the ‘70s, in the early beginnings of the brand — in Bologna there was an intellectual avant-garde scene, and it connected with them because it was different from anything else at that time and so was itself avant-garde, too. But then it connected with Paninari, which is something that is totally the opposite. Then it connected with the casuals and later with the rap scene. In these two cases, I think a big role is being played by the Goggle jacket, as the Goggle jacket has a very unique feature that makes you stand out — it’s iconic, it’s strong. At the same time, it hides you. This works very well on the terraces but also in the rap scene, especially in the South of France where we are seeing a some of the musicians who do not want to be recognised. So, they stand out on stage, but at the same time want to hide their faces.

Regarding the casuals and what happened in the North of England in the early ‘90s, I think it’s to do with C.P. Company being heavily inspired by workwear. These people who were working class, I think they saw in C.P. Company a sort of nobilitated version of something that was very familiar. They didn’t pick up cashmere knits from other brands, for example. Paul, you know the story better than me, but when they used to travel to Europe they would see the Paninari in Italy, who were wearing many brands, but only few of them have been picked up. C.P. is one of those brands, because it played with workwear which was somehow familiar.

END: There’s the element of familiarity but then this is also paired with the experimental, be it through details or materials.

Lorenzo: Exactly, it’s an experimental, different angle on the familiar. This actually came up with Andrew Groves, professor of Fashion Design at Westminster University, who was helping me to understand the relevancy of C.P. in UK culture. It was obvious for him and he gave me this answer: people are familiar with workwear and you play with the same shapes, the same kind of garments, so for them it’s an exotic version of something that also belonged to their culture.

Paul: I don’t know if you dressed in workwear during the day you would want to dress in it in your free time, I really don’t know. One thing is for sure, is the brand is very masculine. So you had this expensive, very masculine “look at me, mum” clothing that they’d take back to areas like Manchester from Europe.

Lorenzo: Why this and not an El Charro belt or a Best Company fleece? It’s definitely interesting, and I have no final answer. But I agree, if this happens, it’s perhaps on a subconscious level. You see this jacket and it looks familiar, but you don’t really get that it’s workwear because it’s so heavily transformed.

Paul: It’s familiar, yes, but then it’s also familiar everywhere. A Field jacket is a Field jacket. So why this fixation in Northern England? I don’t think anybody knows the actual answer.