TIME MACHINE: 1988

Welcome back and welcome aboard our Time Machine! Today’s journey takes us back to 1988, a year when going to the cinema must have fantastic! Directors destined for Hollywood glory filled the screens: Hayao Miyazaki (My Neighbour Totoro), Pedro Almodóvar (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown), Tim Burton (Beetlejuice) and Giuseppe Tornatore, who won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film for Cinema Paradiso. The music charts were dominated by It Takes a Nation of Millions by Public Enemy, Rattle and Hum by U2 and I Should Be So Lucky, Kylie Minogue‘s debut single.

1988 also marks an important milestone in FILA‘s story. It is the year of Magic Line, the mountain sports collection designed in collaboration of Reinhold Messner. The climber from Bressanone inspired the entire project, even its name! Originally, ‘Magic Line’ was the name he gave to the route he designed to climb the south-west face of K2, at 8,611 metres, the second highest peak on earth. Located on the border of Pakistan and China, K2 is also known by local people as Chogori or ‘The Great Mountain’.  Chogori has always been an enormous challenge for mountaineers, who fail to reach its summit at a rate of ten times higher than mountains of similar height. 

In 1979, Messner was fresh from his solo conquest of Nanga Parbat. To climb K2, he organised a small expedition and mapped out his ‘magic line’ based on aerial photographs. The group consisted of Friedl Mutschlechner, Renato Casarotto, Alessandro Goga, Michael Dacher and Robert Schauer. Their plan was to ascend ‘alpine style’, but it soon became obvious that the ‘magic line’ was too complicated to do that within the time they had. Messner convinced his companions to take the canonical route instead via the Abruzzi Spur, which had been used by Achille Compagnoni and Lino Lacedelli during the historic Italian expedition of 1954.  They reached the summit on July 12th. At that time, it was the fourth complete ascent of K2. Messner’s decision was contested, particularly by Casarotto, who accused him of being fearful.

In 1988, FILA, the brand to which Messner’s career is inextricably linked, conceived a line of clothing and accessories for the mountains, called Magic Line. The angularity of the peaks is reflected in sharp geometric shapes and patterns that decorate sweaters and mountain suits. Like the vibes of the 1980s, their tones are bright and pop out against the snow. The collection’s fabrics – wool, flannel – are as warm as a weekend at high altitude. These are timeless designs, which is precisely why in 2018 they have been reborn as an   urban street collection.