Lorenzo Osti describes how C.P. Company is facing the present and the future
I believe that globalisation is an unstoppable phenomenon that we all have to reckon with. The most important challenge for C.P. Company is precisely to grow outside of Europe, for example in the United States and China, but without ever losing, and I want to underline this twice, our Italian DNA. Therefore we continue to be Italian but we have to face the entire world and that is why we opened an office in New York for the US market and one in Tokyo to coordinate all activities in Asia.
The next big evolution is going to be related to retail: we already have plans to open new flagship stores in London, Tokyo, Milan with a model that will be exported in China and the United States. I would also point out that, already in this first year under the new ownership of Tristate Holdings Limited, we are very surprised by the extremely positive results, not only in countries that traditionally love C.P. Company like the UK, but also in Russia, Germany, the Netherlands. The brand still has an immense amount of authenticity and credibility: something that makes me incredibly proud and at the same time conscious that we always have to do better and better to live up to our name.
My dream is to take back C.P. Company to that relevance and importance, not only from a commercial but also a cultural point of view, that it had when my father was designing it. Not trying to imitate what he did, because times have changed, but finding new ingredients to recreate that magic. I think it can be done: we have a solid foundation thanks to the new owners that allows us to pursue research and innovation and we have two very talented designers like Paul Harvey and Alessandro Pungetti, in addition to an Italian team led by Stefano Polato for product development. And then there’s me: I try to keep the authenticity of a brand that, after all, is always been part of my life. I could not think of putting into my work anything but all the passion that I have for it.
As it has always done, C.P. Company continues to move outside the acquired mechanisms of the so-called fashion system. We do not really do catwalks shows, for example. Of course, we follow the seasons, because seasons remain something which the clothing industry has to deal with. But our approach is more similar to that of industrial design. For example, as technological innovation has always been a very important feature for C.P. Company, it is, once again, particularly prevalent in the Spring/Summer 2017 collection.
We want to create beautiful and functional timeless objects that can and will withstand the ever-changing trends of an ever-changing fashion. Our garments must adapt to the wearers, not to seasonal trends.
by Peppe Orrù
