Ten Thousand Rails: The Secret Warehouse
ArtClass Content director Louis Lincoln launches a new film featuring Tosti Alberto.
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On the Adriatic coast of Italy, tucked away inside a quiet warehouse, Tosti Alberto has spent the best part of a lifetime shaping an extraordinary world of his own.
Clothing, paintings, sculpture, furniture and found objects sit side by side, accumulated slowly and instinctively over decades. At the centre of it all is a remarkable archive of Italian sportswear, assembled over three generations of a family business and carried forward through Alberto’s own eye, curiosity and instinct. Rare and significant pieces from C.P. Company and Stone Island chart an important period in the evolution of technical clothing, while also reflecting a much longer story of family, trade and collecting.
The connection to Alberto came through Ollie Evans of Too Hot Limited, whose longstanding relationship with the collector has introduced serious vintage buyers, dealers and collectors from around the world to the archive.
Through Evans, photographer and director Louis Lincoln travelled to Italy with stylist Jordan Dean Schneider to spend time with Alberto and document a collection that is as much about the man behind it as the garments themselves.
Credits
View on-
- Production Company Sludge Creative
- Director Louis Lincoln
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Credits
View on- Production Company Sludge Creative
- Director Louis Lincoln
- Production Co Too Hot Limited
- VFX Dark/London
- Color Avenues
- Executive Producer Ollie Evans
- Producer Louis Lincoln (Audio)
- DP Alessandro Di Rosa
- Editor Louis Lincoln
- VFX Artist Neil Drummond
- Colorist John Layton
- Sound Designer Tennyson Whyte
- Music Daniel Kinde
Explore full credits, grab hi-res stills and more on shots Vault
Credits
powered by- Production Company Sludge Creative
- Director Louis Lincoln
- Production Co Too Hot Limited
- VFX Dark/London
- Color Avenues
- Executive Producer Ollie Evans
- Producer Louis Lincoln (Audio)
- DP Alessandro Di Rosa
- Editor Louis Lincoln
- VFX Artist Neil Drummond
- Colorist John Layton
- Sound Designer Tennyson Whyte
- Music Daniel Kinde
What unfolds is something far more personal than an archive in the traditional sense. Between Alberto’s warehouse and family home, clothes exist amongst art, architecture and the traces of a life spent looking, learning and collecting. Nothing feels overly considered, yet everything seems to have found its place. A Stone Island jacket from the early ’90s might hang only metres from a painting collected decades earlier, technical fabrics, sculpture and furniture quietly sharing the same space.
The details reveal the depth of Alberto’s fascination. Early fabric treatments, unusual constructions, faded labels and pieces carrying the marks of age speak to the experimentation that defined C.P. Company and Stone Island during some of their most important years. But his interest has never been confined to clothing. It is the story behind an object, the hand that made it and the life it has lived that continues to hold his attention.
Away from the warehouse, life moves at a different pace. There is food, wine, truffles when the season allows, an evening smoke and conversation that has nowhere particularly urgent to be. These rituals are inseparable from Alberto’s approach to collecting, considered but never precious, informed by curiosity rather than possession.
Across the following pages, Lincoln's photographs offer an intimate study of Alberto, his surroundings and a lifetime of objects that have gathered meaning with age. More than a record of rare clothing, it is a portrait of one man’s eye, a family legacy spanning three generations, and the world he has quietly built around it.
