To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the brand, C.P. Company has worked together with the curator Lodovico Pignatti Morano and photographer Neil Bedford to create C.P. COMPANY 971-021. An informal history of Italian sportswear, a monumental 438-page monograph (the first in the brand’s history) to celebrate its archive and history - both social and of design. By inviting 50 fans of the brand of all ages from across the world to be photographed wearing historical C.P. Company garments that tell the story of their passion for the brand and how they have used its ground-breaking garments to define and express their identity, the book unravels a rich narrative of an entirely new way of dressing that has emerged in the last 50 years: Italian sportswear.
Chosen for the way in which their way of wearing, selling, collecting, interpreting or actually designing C.P. Company garments ties into broader narratives of cultural significance the 50 backgrounds of the people photographed in C.P. COMPANY 971-021 is richly diverse: from Gary Aspden to cult Japanese director Takashi Miike, to the brand’s most important designers to postmen who have been buying it since 1985 to graffiti writers to eminent stylists to young collectors to Neapolitan second-hand dealers.
These 50 men and women – each of whom entirely “self-styled” their look - have been photographed by UK-photographer Neil Bedford with perfectly confident simplicity, emphasizing their personality, their style and, accordingly, the broader stories that their looks tell.
Accompanying the 50 portraits that comprise the main body of the book is a 180-page DESIGN AND MANUFACTURING GLOSSARY featuring over 200 garments from the brand’s archive, together with detailed, often anecdotal descriptions of the manufacturing techniques and stories behind their development.
The selection of garments highlights moments, manufacturing techniques and fabrics that best express the spirit of the brand and speak to the contemporary relevance of its entire history.