The monograph contains 175 items and 200 accessories specially re-photographed for the book, besides the stylist’s annotations, dyeing trials, fabric samples and unpublished interviews.

I would definitely put him in the same league as Helmut Lang,’ says stylist Max Pearmain, who is a long-time fan of Osti’s work. Written and edited by Osti's wife Daniela Facchinato, with more than 1000 images, including 175 newly photographed individual garments from throughout his career (and more than 200 accessories), never seen before sketches, notes, dyeing tests, fabric samples and interviews and appreciations from not only close collaborators such as Carlo Grazia (right-hand man) and Adriano Caccia (of ITS Artea, principal partner for development of new fabric treatments) but also fashion designers Paul Harvey (Stone Island 1995-2005), Sir Paul Smith, Paolo Zegna, Pier Luigi Loro Piana and Francois Gibaud and legendary magazine editors Franca Sozzani (Vogue Italia) and Ashley Heath (The Face, Arena Homme +), the book offers an extremely wide-spanning look at Osti's achievements and influence, contextualizing the designer as a visionary artist working in numerous different formats. As Berardi points out, “the production of Massimo Osti matured in this linguistic climate which produced objects to underline a function and at the same time negate it, dissolve it, and mock, in a certain sense, the function itself.This first section charts Massimo Osti's progression as a designer through the brands and labels he created, from the beginnings with Chester Perry to the extraordinary growth of C. His garments, as a result, embodied a reassuring brand of straightforwardness – they felt like design objects, not silly fashion pieces. P. Company and Left Hand and inventor of the industry-shifting garment dyeing technique, Raso Gommato and numerous other fabrics still in use today, 20-30 years on; of the intellectual designer who worked from Bologna all his life, inspired as much by the 35000 piece historical garment archive he assembled in his studio as the unique artistic and political ferment of the city throughout the '70s, '80s. 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. Massimo Osti’s oeuvre remains so relevant today that it almost needs to be written about in the present tense to be properly dissected.

Daniela Facchinato, wife of Massimo Osti, is a photographer and journalist who collaborated with Edizioni Cond Nast for ten years and shot, amongst others the international campaigns of C. The material was nylon coated with resin, containing thermosensitive microcapsules which allowed colour change in the dye with change of temperature. Stone Island evolved into an enduring cult, one still alive today in particular in Britain, thanks to its popularity with football fans. It would be hard to find a piece of modern clothing that wasn’t in some way influenced by Massimo Osti. In the early days of Stone Island, Massimo Osti spent a lot of time working on a material that seemed more suited to the military.P. Company and Stone Island, of one of the most respected and imitated designers of his generation (crowned the most important man of 90s menswear by Arena Homme+), whose innovations confounded the rules of the industry and created the fabrics of today. 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. Osti managed the balance of material and immaterial, of product-making and communication with acumen, smartness and a coherence that came from his Italian outlook. That very Italian way of looking forward not only feels urgent and useful today, but also like a way for fashion to escape the quicksand of dry, soulless marketing, the fundamental dishonesty of relentless product-making that is the devilish cover up for a widespread lack of ideas in this saddening historic moment. Crowned the most important man of 1990s menswear by Arena Homme +, Massimo Osti (1944-2005) was one of the most respected and imitated designers of his generation, whose innovations confounded the rules of the industry and created the fabrics of today.

While there was a free-wheeling inventiveness to his work, it never came at the detriment of function, which Massimo Osti considered essential; every little detail had a reason, from a dart placed mysteriously on an elbow or a ridiculous number of pockets.

There are multiple versions of the Ice Jacket, made from just as many materials but one thing that is consistent is the colour change and while it may not seem out of the ordinary now, it was ground-breaking back then. Massimo Osti was a man of ideas, full of concepts that mattered, not layers of varnish over nothing – and he worked hard, if playfully, to make them happen. In fact, you might well be wearing something he invented a long time ago, even though he didn’t actually design it – and that is a genuine achievement.

As Osti once said, “I like to play with forms which don’t belong to the history of the 20-year-olds of today using materials which were unknown to the 20-year-olds of yesteryear. P. Company to MO Double Use, Osti never faltered in his nonstop work ethic – right up until his death in 2005 at age 59 . The book tells its story through images of Osti's most important designs: his innovations in garment dyeing, his development of new fabrics inspired by the tarps truck drivers use to batten down loads, and other materials such as rubber flax, the "Ice Jacket" that changes colors with the temperature, or "Technowool," a wool and nylon wear-resistant "urban armor.Timelessness is also a matter of shapes, and signature Massimo Osti garments do often look like rethought archetypes. is the definitive look at one of the most influential and secretly revered names in Italian fashion history.