Fila vintage shoot
To celebrate 100 years of Fila, we get to root around the Italian sports fashion brand’s archive – we’d love to know which are your favourites!
Think street fashion, and one of the first sports brands on your lips would be Fila. From its tailoring roots back in 1911 Italy, 1973 saw Fila begin its journey to become a brand symbolic of sub-cultures and street fashion.
Its first forays into sport displayed a love of fine tailoring, colour and technical expertise. By the 1980s, the Fila bold, block colours inspired a generation of young working class men to discard their functional garb and adopt a rich, stylish seam of sports jackets, tops and trousers. Wanting to emulate some of that European finesse, the British hoardes couldn’t resist the challenging designs of Fila.
So at Flux, we were really excited to have the opportunity to get into the Fila archive to choose some pieces to photograph to celebrate 100 years of Fila! All these exact pieces were produced in the early to mid-eighties, and come from three of Fila’s iconic categories – White Line, Snow Time and White Rock.
The White Line collection was synonymous with tennis at a time when Bjorn Borg was forging his status as the greatest ever tennis player. The line was worn by many legends of the game, and several styles are now among the most iconic apparel pieces in sportswear.
For those who wanted to make a statement on the slopes, the classic styling and technical prowess of Fila’s ‘Snow Time’ range swept through the alpine skiing world. Throughout the 80’s and 90’s, Fila enjoyed many podium victories thanks to the collective support of Ingemar Stenmark, Tom Watson and Reinhold Messner and their love of the cutting edge avant-garde sports-fashion crossover.
The White Rock collection was the range that Fila produced for the mountain, worn by some of the most intrepid explorers in some of the world’s most hostile environments including the summit of Mount Everest. n.b styles in this collection include photos.
It is this rich heritage that still resonates today, particularly in the brilliant Fila Vintage Collection which looks back to the various eras that helped form the brand. So enjoy this glimpse into the Fila archive and let us know which are your favourites!
See www.fila.com for more information on the current Fila Vintage Collection.
photography JAMES CHAMPION www.jameschampionphotography.com
styling FRANCESCA DVORAK http://cescadvorak.blogspot.com
hair and makeup JOE SYSUM (www.joannasysum.com) and LYDIA WARHURST
models Earl and KUMI @ Models One, ANNA @ Bookings and ELENA @ Profile
