Vier5: Best Company

"I love sweatshirts!",

says Italian fashion designer Olmes Carretti, who founded the label "Best Company" in the early 1980s .
Sweatshirts made from heavy cotton based on the American "highschool-sweats". The use of involved processing methods as well as large embroidered areas, multi-coloured printing and specialised seams differentiated these "Best Company" garments from their American counterparts.
The world of motifs is derived from nature, animals (flying ducks, wild animals, etc.) or sport (golf, tennis, winter sport or water sports, etc.). Caretti developed the motifs himself based upon precise natural studies and drawings. The label was closed down in the 1980s.
Since then it has achieved cult status and the sweatshirts are highly collectable.
VIER5 visited Olmes Carretti for the first time in early 2003 in Reggio Emilia, where he now lives and works.
Since then a fruitful collaboration has burgeoned, giving rise to several interviews with the designer.
In addition, the book systematically documents individual shirts taken from different phases and lines in a series of full and detailed photographs accompanied by explanatory texts.

VIER5

Paris-based Vier5 (Marco Fiedler and Achim Reichert) designed amongst other things the Corporate Identity of the Museum of Applied Art, Frankfurt, the communications of the centre d'art contemporain de Brétigny, as well as the signage of documenta 12. They are also the editors of the fashion magazine