Everything is fashion. Everything is subject to the dictates of fashion and the work clothes that we all wear, for the greater part of the day, are no exception. With the extraordinary economic and social revolution that has taken place in the Western world,
as a result of which we are all working too much and all the time, even the function of clothing has changed and cannot help but shout out what we do, communicate to the world who we are. In recent years workwear has undergone a continual evolution in its formal and technical research as well as in its progressive codifi cation, on a worldwide scale, of trades and professions on the basis of their characteristic clothing.
Through a sort of cataloguing of materials drawn directly from various working environments, the book refl ects on forms, uses and materials. A cataloguing that is interwoven with fashion and its research, showing the extent to which workwear has had an infl uence not just on fashion itself but also on our contemporary mode of dress.
Designers like Allegri, Giorgio Armani, Adeline André, Agnès B, Walter van Beirendonck, Comme des Garçons, C.P. Company/Stone Island, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, DSquared2, Christian Dior, Christian Lacroix, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Marithé + François Girbaud, Hermès, Krizia, Martin Margiela, Marni, Antonio Marras, Max Mara, Moschino, Thierry Mugler, Prada/Miu Miu, Paul Smith, Versace, Louis Vuitton and Yohji Yamamoto have been able to give a new identity and beauty to technical and functional elements, coming up with endless variations on the simple elegance of the working garment.

OLIVIER SAILLARD curator of the Musée de la Mode et du Textile in Paris, contributes to the magazines Elle, Crash and Jalouse.
The photographer OLIVIERO TOSCANI conceived and directed Fabrica and has organized communication and exhibitions for UNCRH, La Repubblica, MTV and Arte. In 2006 he founded La Sterpaia, a modern workshop of the art of communication in the Parco di San Rossore at Pisa, which he directs and where young and creative people from all over the world devote their energies to publishing, design, exhibitions, architecture and the web.
MODE is a project by Fondazione Pitti Discovery devoted to the ideas and fi gures of the fashion world.