Fila Men's Fashion Brand

Fila, Inc. is a South Korean sporting goods company. Fila was founded in 1911 in Italy. Since a takeover in 2007 by Fila Korea, Fila is now owned and operated from South Korea - present ownership first and the founding second, because that is the fact a modern researcher most needs: an Italian-born brand, Korean-owned since 2007. When the Fila brothers first opened shop in 1911 in Biella, a small town in the foothills of northern Italy, they had no idea how far their legacy would travel - the humble-beginnings sentence every old house earns, and this one earns it over a full century.

The brothers' first business was cloth, not clothing brands. Originally in the business of creating quality textiles for local townspeople, the brothers sought to produce fabrics that combined luxury, art and utility, drawing inspiration from their homeland to create product as exquisitely textured and evocative as the Italian landscape: the austerity of the Alps, the fluidity of the hills and the boldness of the Mediterranean coast. That landscape sentence is the brand's design brief - luxury, art and utility, mapped onto Alps, hills and coast - and a researcher should read every later Fila claim about premium fabrics and Italian craftsmanship as a descendant of it.

From Maglficio Biellese to a Global Sportswear Brand

In 1923, the brothers officially established the expanding family-run textile business as a high-quality knitwear manufacturing company, entering into a limited partnership named Maglficio Biellese. Through the years, the business grew beyond the borders of Biella to become a well-known quality knitwear producer for Italy. In 1942, the company merged with the Fratelli Fila company. The knitwear decades are the middle of the story: a Biella textile shop becomes a national quality knitwear producer, and the family name becomes the company name in the 1942 merger.

The transformation into sportswear has a named author and a date. Giansevero Fila hired Enrico Frachey as the managing director of the firm in 1968. Frachey shared Fila's vision, and it was his creativity and managerial resourcefulness that ultimately transformed Fila into a global sportswear brand. A century after its humble beginnings, Fila has become synonymous with performance and sophistication, worn not only by internationally recognized athletes but by the fashion conscious, using premium fabrics designed to radiate the sophistication of Italian craftsmanship while allowing maximum flexibility and performance - from the craggy peaks of Mount Everest to the illustrious lawns of Wimbledon. The official Fila site is in References.

Reading This Fila Record

Read as a buying guide, Fila gives a man the origin test and the performance test. The origin test: the garment descends from Biella textiles that combined luxury, art and utility - the Alps, the hills and the Mediterranean coast as design sources - through the 1923 knitwear partnership and the 1942 merger. The performance test is the Frachey transformation of 1968 and its stated result: premium fabrics radiating Italian craftsmanship while allowing maximum flexibility and performance, worn by internationally recognized athletes and the fashion conscious alike, in sportswear, tennis gear and sneakers. The 2007 South Korean ownership is part of the test, not a footnote.

Fila, under F in the Men's Fashion Brands directory: the sporting goods company founded by the Fila brothers in Biella, Italy in 1911 as quality textiles for local townspeople, established as the Maglficio Biellese knitwear partnership in 1923, merged with Fratelli Fila in 1942, transformed into a global sportswear brand under managing director Enrico Frachey from 1968, and owned and operated from South Korea since the 2007 takeover by Fila Korea.

Photos