Fila to make runway debut at Milan Fashion Week

Fila will present their first fashion show at the Milan Spring/Summer 2019 Fashion Week.

The sportswear giant will also inaugurate an exhibition at the Triennale Design Museum on Sept. 19. The event will see the celebration of the history of the label as well as its plans for the future.

'In the last years, the fashion world has shown a great interest in Fila. Sportswear became more and more important for the fashion industry, also because it's what customers are currently looking for,' Fila Global chairman Gene Yoon told WWD. 'We started doing interesting collaborations with fashion brands and retailers, such as Gosha Rubchinskiy, Urban Outfitters and Jason Wu - this one locally for China - and we thought it was our moment to break the rules and to enter the fashion arena. We strongly believe that a fashion show is the best way to make our voice heard by the fashion system.'

For its first runway debut, Fila tapped Antonino Ingrasciotta and Joseph Graesel as creative directors who present a 100% streetwear line. Both designers who worked together at Strenesse and Adidas Originals respectively have plunged into the archives to give a modern edge to the label.

'Their background perfectly matches sports and fashion. Starting from the Fila archive, they're working on a collection that aims to bring the brand to the next level, connecting the past with its future,' Yoon said of the two designers. 'Working on the collaborations with the fashion designers, we discovered that the Fila heritage was surprisingly rich with very modern fashion elements. So it was kind of natural for our creative directors to merge these elements, adding to the collection inspirations coming from the Fila 'culture,' such as the appearance of the brand in the Royal Tenenbaums movie by Wes Anderson and the endorsement of champions like Bjorn Borg, Ingemar Stenmark and Alberto Tomba, among others.'

At February's Milan Fashion Week Fila collaborated with Fendi on a capsule collection. In recent years it has been regularly collaborating with designers such as Jason Wu, Anna Sui, and Gosha Rubchinskiy.

The Milan Spring/Summer 2019 Fashion Week is set to take place from September 18 to 24, 2018.

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