The Goggle Jacket is undoubtedly C.P. Company’s most iconic and sought-after product.
Yet if we lived in a world where C.P. Company didn’t exist, and someone proposed making jackets with a fold-down set of goggles in them, very few people would be on board. Even fewer people would be on board if you told them these goggle jackets would then cost at least £400.
The commercial success of jackets with goggles displayed on the hood would seem nothing short of a miracle, at face value, it seems like a gimmick, but in reality, it’s anything but. C.P. Company’s Goggle jackets are timeless, and this is thanks to the story behind the creation of the original Goggle Jacket, the Mille Miglia.
Like all of Osti’s early creations, the Goggle Jacket was birthed as a resolve to a crisis of functionality.
Massimo Osti has always had a thing for lenses, even in the initial years of Chester Perry & later C.P. Company, prototype eyewear such as spectacles, sunglasses and standalone goggles were frequently produced. As you’d expect, all of these genres of eyewear were finished to the highest quality, but purely functioned as accompanying accessories to the garments.
Osti’s eyewear fixation would sit quietly at the back of his psyche until in 1988 a deal was struck between C.P. Company and the famed Italian endurance motor race – Mille Miglia.
The Mille Miglia was first held in 1927, designed as an event where the world’s top drivers would quite literally battle to complete the 1,000-mile loop through northern Italy in the fastest time. The course was arduous, and the conditions were worse. It was a true sport, with a lack of sport – rogue tactics used by competitors to gain an advantage over their adversaries were commonplace. All of these factors contributed to it being one of the best spectator motor races in the world.
However, in 1957 two fatal crashes would take place, resulting in eleven drivers and spectators losing their lives. Following this tragic news, it was decided that the race would be canned.
It didn’t take long for Italian motorsport fans to grow hungry for the chaos of the Mille Miglia once again, and in the 1970s a group of racing fanatics would manage to resurrect the race as a more polished road rally event.
By, 1987 the race was beginning to retain its original viewership and was in the market for a suitable sponsor to provide hardwearing garments to its panel of gutsy drivers, it didn’t take them long to indicate in the direction of Massimo Osti.
At the time, C.P. Company was already well established, thanks to its nature of innovation and experimentation with obscure fabrics and famed garment-dyeing techniques. Its adoption by Italy’s Paninari youth culture also contributed to the brand’s rising popularity, but it was Osti’s persistent loyalty to military references in his designs that brought him to the attention of Mille Miglia.
Inspired by his dedication to form and function, Mille Miglia approached him to sponsor the event by supplying a purpose-designed garment for drivers. It was to be a match made in heaven, Osti’s lens fixation was about to be brought to the fore.
He had already long been experimenting with protective hoods used by the army, but it was inspiration from Japanese Anti-gas goods uniforms that influenced him to stitch a set of lenses to the hood of a jacket. However, this would prove troublesome to put into practice, leading him to approach Sports Optics Specialist ‘Baruffaldi’ to create a unique rubber frame which would sit tightly in the lens socket.
The iconic hood was then combined with a jacket design drawn from Swiss army M70 Field Jackets, Osti then implemented a signature 50FILI construction to provide drivers protection from rain and road debris. A further single ‘watch-viewer’ lens was added to the sleeve to allow drivers to check the time without removing their hands from the steering wheel. A set of large pockets also adorned the jacket, housing race-day essentials such as maps, food and water.
The jacket was fittingly titled the ‘Mille Miglia’ and had more than sufficiently achieved Mille Miglia’s stamp of approval. Osti executed their requirements to perfection, and importantly went above and beyond with the goggles addition.
The partnership between C.P. Company and Mille Miglia ended in 1989, but there was to be no braking for the Mille Miglia Jacket, the standout silhouette went on to be a roaring success, but not in the realm that Osti had envisioned…
2,000km from Bologna, C.P. Company had already been gaining a foothold in the casual and terrace subcultures of the United Kingdom, and the introduction of the Mille Miglia and other goggle jackets thereafter only sought to bolster this popularity. Some argue that the adoption of Goggle Jackets within the realms of football was so fans could conceal their identity, but there’s no concrete evidence of this. In our view, football casuals have always had a penchant for garments made from fine fabrics, and that’s exactly what C.P. Company was producing.
This early UK love affair with the goggle jacket would go on to leave a lasting mark, with many British musicians and other notable figures publicly sharing their love for the garment.
The Mille Miglia set out what would become the most defining feature of any C.P. Company garment in history, the goggles and watch-viewer have featured on countless outerwear silhouettes since. The Mille Miglia jacket itself would be reimagined in 2009 for its 20th anniversary, headed by, Aitor Throup a young designer born in Argentina but residing in Burnley.
Throup’s efforts brought the Mille Miglia into the modern day, utilizing a GORE-TEX 3-Layer Performance Shell as its base, and a pigment-dyeing process called ‘Tinto Terra’ in which soil from Pompeii was used to give the Mille Miglia a deep, earthy patina.
The legacy of the Mille Miglia and the Goggle Jacket is intensely rich, and undoubtedly a defining factor in the success of the brand. No one could have executed a goggled jacket as well as Osti and the Mille Miglia’s original conception as a functional, purpose-built garment has bled into all other models thereafter.
Putting on a Goggle Jacket is a bit special, and the reason for this is heritage. Anyone could attach a pair of glasses to a hood, but it wouldn’t be the same, it wouldn’t carry that story with it.
Modern iterations of the goggle jacket carry many of the same design and styling cues of the first – they’ve changed very little, and that’s what makes them so, so good.
Lino Wax Goggle Jacket
Flatt Nylon Goggle Jacket
Toob Two Goggle Jacket
Explorer Jacket
Flatt Nylon Goggle Jacket
There are few brands that are as experimental as C.P. Company, and even less that are commercially successful in the same breath. This speaks volumes for Osti’s original designs and his dedication to the pursuit of functional outerwear.
Goggle jackets certainly aren’t going anywhere, and neither is C.P. Company. They’ll continue to shift and adapt, but one thing’s for sure, they’re not slowing down.
