manager, waded through 10,000 boxes,
dating key items. ‘It was not organised at all,’
says Benedetto. Luckily, both have worked
at Fila for nearly 20 years and they were
able to quiz ex-colleagues for information.
They now look after some 15,000 garments,
more than 30,000 shoes, and an array of
accompanying catalogues and literature.
Along the way, the pair and their team came
up with innovative ways to archive – trainers
are vacuum-packed and hung in rows from
metal racks. While the museum is open to
the public, the full archive is by appointment
only, though there are visitors of some sort
nearly every week, including Fila designers,
licence holders and collaborators. ‘When
I see the eyes of the designers when they visit,
I realise what we have,’ says Benedetto.
Yoon predicted the nostalgia of the future,
she argues. ‘When the time to open arrived,
the timing was perfect. Everyone is selling
their history now. Many can’t sell true
history, or something unique – but we have
objects to back up everything that can be
said about our brand.’ When the archive
opened in 2010, the trend for retro sportswear
was just about to boom. In 2016, for his S/S17
collection, Gosha Rubchinskiy debuted a
collaboration with ‘old-school’ sportswear
brands including Fila, Sergio Tacchini andKappa. To a new generation, they felt fresh.
Giants like Adidas caught on, bringing back
Gazelle trainers and Beckenbauer tracksuits.
This year, Fendi sensed the potential for a
collaboration between two respected heritage
Italian houses and reached out to Fila to
work together on graphic printed T-shirts.
Many people think of tennis when they
think of Fila, recalling a young Björn Borg
sporting the brand’s apparel on court
(a wonderful shirt on display in the museum
shows a prototype for Borg adapted from a
style made for Italian player Adriano Panatta,
featuring hand-drawn pen stripes). But the
museum shows the ambition of Fila during its
early years – the range is surprising. So too is
the focus on pushing style as well as function.
‘Back then, a lot of the companies had
a gentleman’s agreement,’ says Benedetto.
‘Tacchini was only doing tennis. Lacoste
only tennis. North Face only mountain –
so there was not a company that was really
covering other sports, and Fila wanted to
be that.’ The first apparel collection in 1973
catered to tennis. In 1976, it created clothes
for climbing – its White Rock collection
of 1978 was worn by Reinhold Messner when
he became the first man to climb Everest
without supplementary oxygen. Later, Fila
set its sights on skiing, sailing, diving andswimming. Then came basketball, cricket,
running and table tennis.
Within the archive, the brand hopes to
discover the ticket to its future: to bottle the
essence of Fila and recapture its former glory.
Yoon has remodelled the business structure
to prioritise licensing agreements, something
he knows a lot about having spent years
working as a manufacturer of Fila products
in Korea. His introduction to the brand came
in the 1980s when he spent hours travelling
to Biella to try and secure the Korean licence
for Fila, but was turned away. The archive
allows Fila to have better relationships with
its global collaborators, who can refer back
to the brand’s greatest hits for inspiration.
It’s fully digitalised, so teams as far-flung as
Brazil and China can request material. Such
knowledge is vital for maintaining cohesion.
‘When I see a product, I can immediately say,
this is Fila, this is not Fila. I don’t need to
see the logo. When you spend every day in
the archive, you just know,’ says Benedetto.
By bringing attention back to Biella, Fila
hopes to spread globally without losing any
of its DNA. ‘We have had a lot of difficulties,’
says Benedetto. ‘The journey has been very
long, but now, after so many years of hard
work, we are starting in the right way.’ ∂
fila.comClockwise from near left,
a drawing from the iconic
White Line tennis collection,
which debuted in 1974;
the sole of a 2-A turf trainer
from 1998; clothes from
the WCT collection, launched
in 1981, appear in the top
picture, while, bottom, the
distinctive red and blue
F-box logo appears on White
Line clothing from 1979‘When I see a product, I can
say, this is Fila, this is not Fila.
I don’t need to see the logo’
120 ∑
Fashion