From Palace to palazzo: Lev Tanju is taking FILA+ to the next level

No sooner had Lev Tanju been offered the role of creative director at FILA+, had he hopped on a plane and headed to the label’s Italian birthplace, immersing himself in a century of innovation. Housing over 30,000 items from the brand’s past, the Fondazione FILA in Biella was Tanju’s entryway into an extraordinary legacy, and while there the London-born creative was struck by the story of Pierluigi Rolando, FILA’s creative director from the early 1970s. That period saw the young Rolando reinvigorate the brand by introducing the White Line tennis collection, recognising the tracksuit as a symbol of the leisure class as well as a sporting staple, and also leveraging canny sponsorship deals for players, inventing the concept of sports endorsements as we know them today. Under the stewardship of Rolando, FILA was transformed from a successful undergarment manufacturer to a multi-million dollar global athletic brand, all within a decade.

If the story is sounding a little familiar, then that’s not exactly a coincidence. Rolando’s ability to predict the unpredictable could be compared to what Tanju has achieved with pop culture behemoth Palace – but he’d never be so bold as to say so. “I can’t compare myself to him,” Tanju says incredulously, when asked about a possible parallel. “Yes, there’s been things that [Palace] has done that has changed things, but we’ve still had the road paved by the masters and the people before us.”

Despite his humble response, FILA clearly saw the vision, and that’s why Tanju was hand-selected to front FILA+, the company’s new ‘elevated’, standalone label. Though we’re yet to see the clothes since the announcement was made in January, anticipation is at a fever pitch, and will surely be buoyed by our exclusive release of FILA+’s first campaign images, seeped in sprezzatura and shot by Ryan McGinley in the Tuscan countryside. As Tanju said to me, “the main office is in Italy, the designers are Italian, FILA is Italian: FILA+ is about shining a light back on Italy and sportswear.”

Below, we catch up with the creative director about his new role, delving through the FILA archive, and how Italian culture has captured his heart.

Hi Lev! Congrats on the new creative director role at FILA+. What was your initial reaction to the offer?

Lev Tanju: I was intrigued! I loved FILA growing up, so I was interested in the Italian story and heritage. I flew to Milan straight away, to the headquarters. It was nice to be asked. I met all the people and I just had a really good rapport with everybody. I love Italian people. It seemed like a good vibe.

What is it about Italian people that you love?

Lev Tanju: Humour, man. They’re funny but sometimes they don’t mean to be funny. The way they react to certain things just cracks me up. In meetings, it’s just a different vibe. I’d be in a meeting and they’d bring me out a big tray of focaccia bread and I’m just like, ‘woah… alright’. Just funny, funny, different things. The people that are working there, the archive lady’s been working there for 20 odd years, and loads of the people are just so immersed in the brand. It felt like a family atmosphere.

What were the design starting points for the AW24 collection that lands in September?

Lev Tanju: I love acetate and chenille tracksuits, so I was heavily thinking about my favourite references from FILA of those. I also wanted to put my own twist on it, so I was always inspired by paninari. It’s kind of obvious, but it’s how they always mix different styles together – a puffer jacket with more military stuff underneath, or boots or cowboy and Western influences. All that mixture of different feelings in one look was quite a big inspiration for me. But then also, I wanted to start off just doing some really classic pieces, get the shapes right, the fits, the fabrics. A lot of the stuff is super simple and just a well cut nice tracksuit, you know?

“FILA was just so forward thinking and Rolando was really bold… that’s what I aspire to be like” – Lev Tanju

I also read that you were really inspired by Pierluigi Rolando when you went over to Milan.

Lev Tanju: I didn’t realise the whole story about him until I got to the archive and I read the book. It’s amazing all the things he did with fabrics and development. I didn’t realise he was at the forefront of sportswear so early on. Just looking at the athletes they had on board, like [mountain climber Reinhold] Messner and Björn Borg – I mean, I reference what they were wearing more and more. FILA was just so forward thinking and Rolando was really bold. They were doing something that was really different from everyone else, and I found that really inspirational. That’s what I aspire to be like. He was very much at the forefront of inventing sportswear, literally, and elevating sportswear that was about performance but could be worn in everyday life.

All the knitting machines and the wool techniques he was doing, it was really inspiring to see and read. And then also looking at his art, and him being an amazing artist and sculptor, making these crazy metal sculptures. He was one of the masters, really. I was taken aback by how much he did, like all his drawings of penguins – referencing penguins in colour blocking for tracksuits. Really artistic approaches to design before anyone was doing that.

You think about the amount of sportswear now, and everything revolves around some of the things he carved out so long ago. When a brand is 100 years old, the depth is really exciting. I felt that when I came, and Pierluigi was an amazing story that just opened my eyes up to their world and how they were at the forefront of everything.

Was approaching the ‘depth’ of the brand’s history nerve wracking at all?

Lev Tanju: No, not really, I don’t know why. I guess I’ve worked so much in sportswear that I’m just confident in what I like. I’m not Pierluigi Rolando obviously, I have a completely different approach to everything, as every designer does, but I can bring something different and fun to the brand, and I was proud to be asked to do it. At the end of the day it’s clothes, init? I’ve never been that guy – I’m not a fashion designer. I’m not trying to change people’s brains on how they perceive sportswear, I’m just trying to make really nice everyday things for everyday people that are true and honest to the FILA heritage.

Did you ever draw parallels between yourself and Pierluigi? The way he innovated at FILA is similar to what you’ve been able to do with Palace.

Lev Tanju: Maybe, but I don’t know. I can’t compare myself to him, just because... yes, there’s been things that [Palace] has done that has changed things, but we’ve still had the road paved by the masters and the people before us. I compare Pierluigi to someone like Massimo Osti. I see them more as crazy inventors doing something completely different to what I do. But then also there’s a couple of Pierluigi’s notes about communities and how things are socially connected to what people wear. I did notice similarities with what we both care about. I guess it all does come down to making a tracksuit sometimes, and we both like doing that. That’s one similarity!

“Palace is a core skate brand that does one thing, and this is based on the roots of FILA as a brand. It’s a different approach for me” – Lev Tanju

Do you think people are expecting the collection to be like a Palace x FILA collab rather than its own thing?

Lev Tanju: I guess everybody will think different things. Palace is a core skate brand that does one thing, and this is based on the roots of FILA as a brand. It’s a different approach for me. I mean, everyone expects everything, don’t they? All the keyboard warriors know what’s going to happen, but they don’t. I’m excited to freak people out and not give them what they think they want.

A part of my creative processes is how do I make this different, and as a creative director I want to split my worlds apart – I’m not going to make skateboards. To me, FILA is an iconic, historic sportswear brand, deep in tennis, deep in all these amazing sporting moments. So I’m concentrating on looking at them as a brand and how we can do cool things that are going to get FILA out there even further. So it’s very different, but obviously I guess people might think that, yeah.

There’s also these strong Italian references in the new campaign images – you’re not Italian though, right?

Lev Tanju: I’m not no, I’m Turkish funnily enough [laughs].

So how did you feel about approaching the ‘Italianess’ of it all?

Lev Tanju: Well, the main office is in Italy, the designers are Italian, FILA is Italian: FILA+ is about shining a light back on Italy and sportswear, so I’m really interested in working with Italian mills and shooting in Italy. One big thing that I changed was the logo, by swapping one colour out. Originally it was designed with references to the Stars and Stripes. The designer was inspired by pop art and the Love sculpture [by Robert Indiana], so he chose red, white and blue. Stepping into that, it is quite tongue-in-cheek – and the type of thing that I would do – to just flip one colour and turn it back into the Italian flag. I’m interested in working with characters from all different realms of Italy, so that was the first strong, bold move, like: this brand is Italian. A lot of people I spoke to didn’t even know that.

You mentioned the tongue-in-cheek brand identity – is that something you wanted to bring over from Palace as well?

Lev Tanju: I guess that’s just my tone of voice. Whatever I do is going to have that in it. So it isn’t a sense of bringing anything over really, it’s just me being myself, and how I perceive things and how I naturally speak about them. Humour is a big part of everything I do, and that’s just me as a person, not taking everything too seriously.

Like the campaign image of the old man holding the fake Oscar?

Lev Tanju: We went to a little coffee shop and he came out with camo trousers on, and we gave him a jumper to wear and the LA cap – one of my favourite things, obviously another humorous reference, but I think it’s a wicked cap – and then I saw that he had a little Oscar that said 'Ragu champion' for Ragu sauce from three years ago. We threw the little Oscar in there as well to reference Hollywood even more.

With the new campaign, was there any other inspiration other than the flag?

Lev Tanju: I mean I love Ryan McGinley. I’ve always respected him as a photographer – he’s an artist, he’s not even a photographer in my eyes. So I met him and instantly we just got on really, really well. I felt like I’d known him forever. It was a simple brief: I wanted to shoot beautiful things in Italy and represent the tricolore colours. So it was more just looking for things in the middle of the countryside that looked great and were red [laughs]. It was a very mellow approach. It was so fun hanging out with him, taking photos, shooting some, regular, cool Milanese people. It was really fun.