On the runway in Milan in February 2018, Italian fashion house Fendi teased their collaboration with sportswear brand Fila. This October the Fendi Mania Capsule Collection was launched, a prêt-à-porter Fendi collection, with a street wear twist.
The collaboration is indicative of a growing microcosm within the fashion cosmos. A legion of luxury brands, spurred on by the fast fashion industry, have partnered with sportswear brands, birthing collaborations like Adidas x Alexander Wang and Reebok x Victoria Beckham. This November, H&M and Moschino will release a collection together, so while the Fendi x Fila capsule collection is by no means unique, it is at the vanguard of a movement within the fashion industry, which sees the borders between luxury and high street fade away.
The collection had its genesis when Silvia Venturini Fendi, the Creative Director of Fendi, found Instagram artist @hey_reilly, and reposted an image of the Fendi logo spliced with the Fila one. The origin story, which so perfectly demonstrates the influence of social media, serves as an illuminating analogy into how luxury brands are changing. This season Fendi played heavily on branding, revamping the house’s image and hugely boosting the brand’s visibility on social media. The logo, instantly recognizable, plastered all over jackets, bags and shoes, is at once as siren call to other consumers and a symbol of wealth, taste and superiority of the proprietor. The self-awareness the house displays by taking that symbol, and deconstructing it, by merging with the down market sportswear brand, Fila, makes a mockery of their customers who consumes with such appetite only logo-centric products, excessively branded, to show off their own extravagance and pseudo-style. This is reflected in the capsule’s name – Mania.
This phenomenon, where brands riff on the symbols which make them elite and coveted, is seen in Gucci’s faux knockoff t-shirts, where the moniker was replaced by ‘Guccy’. Cultural theorist Stuart Hall captures this irony in this in his work saying, “Yesterday’s deconstructions are often tomorrow’s orthodox clichés.”
The pieces themselves in the collection do not disappoint. They manage to scream Fendi, in a manner, which is sophisticated yet obvious. The collection has pieces for men, women and children, from bags to shoes to coats, all with the amusing and fresh twist on the classic interlocking F. The price range sits firmly on the Fendi rather than Fila end of the scale, but the pieces are dynamic and enticing and worth investment.
