First introduced in 1988 for the Mille Miglia car race, C.P. Company’s ‘goggle jacket’ – perhaps the Italian brand’s most-recognised export – lies at the heart of a new exhibition in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, opening this month.
Titled ’The Goggle Jacket: How Design Innovation Can Build a Community’ (July 20 – 23 2023), the immersive exhibition will span the brand’s 50-year history and marks its first-ever New York exhibition.
‘C.P. Company takes pride in its international community that we have built for the past 50 years and wants to celebrate it through a series of special moments,’ Lorenzo Osti, president of C.P. Company tells Wallpaper*.
C.P. Company to host first-ever exhibition in Brooklyn
Goggle jackets, photographed as part of a previous C.P. Company exhibition
‘We decided to bring this exhibition to New York, as we had a deep connection to the city since the opening of our former retail space in the Flatiron Building in 1991. We’re very excited to finally bring the brand here again in such a significant and momentous way and introduce ourselves to a new generation of New York fashion enthusiasts.’
The ‘goggle jacket’ encapsulates C.P. Company’s utility-driven approach. Based on the shape of a Swiss field jacket, it features an in-built pair of goggles in the hood. First designed for endurance automobile racing, it has since been adopted by subcultures and youth movements around the world.
‘The exhibition is dedicated to the most iconic – and evocative – C.P. Company garment: the goggle jacket,’ continues Osti. ‘Originally conceived for a historic race, it found its own way in time, becoming part of the uniforms of very different subcultures, from the left-wing in Bologna up to the French rap scene in recent years.’
C.P. Company’s former retail space at the Flatiron Building in New York
’I believe the goggle jacket perfectly embodies Umberto Eco’s “Open Work” concept, [that] emphasises the role of the viewer in co-creating the meaning of the work through their own subjective experiences and perspectives, promoting a dynamic and interactive relationship between the work and its audience.’
The exhibition itself will feature interactive displays, archival images, and will lead attendees from C.P. Company’s founding by Italian engineer and designer Massimo Osti in 1971 through ‘decades of innovation’ to the present day. Alongside, C.P. Company will host a number of activities in the space, including an exclusive film, panel discussion and a live podcast recording.
‘The Goggle Jacket: How Design Innovation Can Build a Community’ will run from July 20 – 23, 2023 at 25 Kent Avenue, Brooklyn, NY, 11249.
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