FILA Timelapse

FILA Timelapse looks back over the 110-year history of the sports and fashion brand through its archive. Rather than a straight chronology, the book is a visual narrative that jumps across space and time, and its meaning comes from the unexpected contrasts between archival images. It mixes many kinds of material, from catalog pages to rotogravures.

The book argues that FILA was the first brand to move out of the sporting arena, whatever the sport, and into everyday life and the collective imagination of Italian and international audiences. Sports figures themselves were its driving force and its testimonials, and they reached a level of fame comparable to that of rock stars. Through the images, FILA's position at the crossover of sport and lifestyle emerges as a kind of pop document.

The pictures are interspersed with texts that work like a magnifying glass on the sequence and prompt reflection on the brand's history. These are written by Marta Franceschini, Carlo Antonelli, Matteo Codignola, Emanuele Coccia, Michele Galluzzo, Lorenzo Ottone and Angelo Flaccavento. A further set of narrative texts concentrates on objects and items that marked FILA's story: Karl Holmqvist writes on Bjorn Borg, Silvia Calderoni on Greg Louganis, Jeph Button on Reinhold Messner, HB Hoyo on Giovanni Soldini, Rahim Attarzadeh on Gosha Rubchinskiy, and Charlie Fox on FILA shoes.