‘I’m at all times on the lookout for one thing bizarre’: Palace’s Lev Tanju on his new function as inventive director for Fila+

Lev Tanju loves to buy, although he’s attempting to cease. Latest purchases have included a S/S 2015 Chanel satchel adorned with badges and peace indicators from an LA consignment retailer (‘to me, it’s higher than a portray’), a classic Chrome Hearts belt (the model is a present obsession), garments to play golf (‘bizarre classic knitwear and Gore-Tex’), and Charvet slippers from Paris. The Croydon-born designer admits he must ‘minimise’ and have a wardrobe clear-out. ‘I most likely have round 200 T-shirts, then put on the identical three each day. I purchase issues as a result of I like them and by no means put on them. However I nonetheless respect them being there.’

Lev Tanju on his function as inventive director for Fila+

It’s Tanju’s unabashed love of garments that has ensured the success of Palace, the skatewear label he co-founded in 2009 with Gareth Skewis. The pair knew one another from skating on London’s South Financial institution, and briefly labored collectively at Slam Metropolis Skates in Covent Backyard. Palace was constructed from a need to create one thing to rival the dominance that US manufacturers like Supreme had over skatewear. In what would change into the label’s tongue-in-cheek type, the title got here from the scuzzy flat, affectionately referred to as the ‘Palace’, that Tanju shared with a gaggle of skaters close to Waterloo station. Palace started with T-shirts – early designs have been send-ups of Chanel and Versace – however shortly expanded into tracksuits, one other signature of the label, after which a full wardrobe, recognisable for the ‘Tri-Ferg’ triangle emblem, designed by legendary illustrator Fergus Purcell.

‘I didn’t anticipate individuals to need to purchase the garments right away,’ says Tanju. ‘I used to be simply making good T-shirts. Then I made tracksuits, as a result of I like tracksuits. We by chance received into the swing of issues and commenced working with different manufacturers.’ This included a prolific slew of collaborations with the likes of Adidas, Ralph Lauren, Crocs, Gucci and even Wedgwood. Palace turned recognized for the eclectic and the surprising, a mirrored image of Tanju’s private type. ‘I’m at all times on the lookout for one thing bizarre.’

Tanju’s newest chapter is a job as inventive director for Fila+, an offshoot of the Italian sportswear model, launched in 2024. It began with a name from a buddy that intrigued him sufficient to fly out to Biella, the northern Italian city the place Fila is predicated. ‘I went to the archive, the place I met individuals who had been working there for 20-odd years. It felt like household.’ Not lengthy after flying to Biella, pushed by ‘intestine feeling’, he signed the contract. Tanju revealed his first assortment final June through a sequence of photos shot by Ryan McGinley, one other longtime skateboarder, in Tuscany. That very same month, he confirmed a second assortment in a former industrial house in Milan, whereby a solid of characters populated a sequence of Nineteen Seventies-style tableaux. The 2 collections set out Tanju’s intentions for Fila+: an eclectic wardrobe rooted within the model’s sportswear previous, although nonetheless defiantly his personal imaginative and prescient. ‘I see it because the highlights of the final 110 years of the model by means of the lens of what I believe is cool,’ he explains, recounting a course of he’s used to after 15 years of Palace collaborations. ‘I can pull issues out of an archive that somebody may suppose is stinking, however I really adore it as a result of it’s stinking. I like so many alternative issues, and I’m not scared of blending them.’

That stated, when first approaching Fila+, he initially had plans to maintain issues ‘clear and concise, to be actually easy’, nevertheless it wasn’t lengthy till his instinct took maintain. ‘Slowly, it was like my true self got here out,’ he says. ‘It’s like a good looking mess: I’ve at all times adopted what I need to put on, not what does somebody need to purchase. I’m similar to fuck it, I need to make stuff for myself.’ So there are velour tracksuits and cable-knit sweaters, working males’s acetate trousers and V-neck sweaters recalling classic soccer jerseys, alongside puffer jackets slashed with panels of crimson, white and blue, Fila’s signature colors. Silhouettes have a tendency in direction of a extra Nineteen Seventies match than the dishevelled shapes of Palace (‘a looser backside and a tighter prime’), whereas two new variations of Fila’s ubiquitous F-Field emblem seem all through. The primary is reworked right into a crimson coronary heart and seems on caps and ties, whereas the second is reimagined within the colors of the Italian flag. ‘I didn’t actually need to change the brand an excessive amount of, as a result of to me it’s the most effective logos on this planet.’

Tanju’s personal first Fila buy was a pair of the model’s Grant Hill basketball boots, and early reminiscences embody watching West Ham and ACF Fiorentina play sporting Fila kits on TV as a toddler (again in Turkey, the place Tanju’s household originates, his father was knowledgeable footballer). In his Fila+ collections, there’s a nostalgia for classic sportswear: reference factors for the primary two collections embody the on- and off-court Fila uniforms of tennis ace Björn Borg and a climbing assortment designed for Reinhold Messner, who was the primary to climb Mount Everest solo with out the usage of oxygen in 1980 (‘the Messner mountain stuff is unbelievable’). Tanju was additionally fascinated with the theatrical, charismatic determine of Pierluigi Rolando, Fila’s first inventive director. Within the Nineteen Seventies, Rolando would rework a model then recognized for manufacturing underwear into a world sporting powerhouse with the ‘White Line’ tennis assortment. ‘He invented modern-day sportswear. It’s inspirational.’

Tanju says that he travels to Milan or Biella about as soon as a month (plus he does ‘a whole lot of Zooms’). He needs his Fila+ collections to replicate the idiosyncrasies and innate class of Italian type, which he loves. ‘Italians have a gnarly sense of fashion: they’re the most effective at operating style homes, the most effective at meals, they’re very passionate and I like the way in which they gown,’ he says. ‘An Italian man on a scooter sporting a puffer jacket to me is cooler than a man in New York sporting a puffer jacket.’ When he’s in Italy, he likes ‘consuming pasta, consuming pizza’ and, in fact, buying. In Milan, he enjoys wandering down By way of Monte Napoleone, the high-end buying avenue lined with the flagship shops of the Italian powerhouses Prada, Versace, Gucci et al. ‘After I’m uninspired, I like the expertise of going into these locations, what’s occurring, the colors, the materials. Then I simply go and sit with a espresso and see what everybody’s sporting.’

However regardless of 15 profitable years of Palace, and his title often showing on the lists of style’s most influential figures, Tanju says he doesn’t contemplate himself part of that world. On By way of Monte Napoleone, he’s nonetheless an outsider wanting in. ‘I don’t really feel like a designer. I make garments – style could be very completely different. A great designer modifications your notion of how individuals gown. I’m not likely attempting to try this, I’m attempting to do one thing very useful that’s additionally cool.’ What he thinks he’s good at is ‘creating a sense and a imaginative and prescient and a temper. I like promoting the dream. It’s why I believe I used to be a sensible choice for Fila. Perhaps somebody might have designed a greater assortment, however they wouldn’t have been capable of do the advertising and marketing so properly. You weigh it up. I believe I’m ambassador. I like the model.’