Fila's debut runway to take place in Milan

By

Marion Deslandes

Published
Jun 28, 2018

After a relatively low-key decade or so, Fila is making a come back – and this time its ambitions go way beyond sportswear. The brand, founded in Italy in 1911, is cultivating its image as a fashion label and will present its first ever runway show at the next Milan Fashion Week, set to take place from September 18th to 24th, 2018. The exact date and venue of Fila's show have not yet been confirmed. 

The brand was acquired by a South Korean businessman via Fila Korea in 2007 and has been on something of a mission of late as it seeks to up its prestige and desirability through collaborations with designers such as Jason Wu, Anna Sui and Gosha Rubchinskiy. At February's Milan Fashion Week the brand even made an appearance at Fendi's runway show, with the Italian luxury label emblazoning a capsule collection with the red and blue Fila logo. 

The brand's own debut runway show will be led by Antonino Ingrasciotta, who became Fila's creative director last year, after seven years in the same role at Adidas. Fila will also organise an exhibition at Milan cultural institution La Triennale, an event that will present the heritage and history of the label as well as its plans for the future. 

"After a number of successful fashion collaborations, we thought it was a natural progression to be on the official Milan Fashion Week calendar of with our own show and an exhibition delivering a 360-degree storytelling experience," explained Gene Yoon, the brand's global chairman. 

Fila is currently distributed in continental Europe through master licencee Dosenbach-Ochsner. In 2016, the brand hoped to see sales in the region increase by 10% per year to ultimately reach a total of 620 million euros in 2020. However, as the label sees a resurgence of interest in its offering thanks to the popularity of the nostalgic 90s trend, it could well surpass this target. Indeed, Patrick Buffeteau, Fila's manager in France, recently told FashionNetwork.com that the brand had seen sales in the country increase from 10 million euros in 2017 to 37 million in 2018.