A suede and wool upper paired with flannel lining provides superior warmth and comfort for the winter season. Waxed laces and bronze eyelets add toughness and style to the cold weather aesthetic.
The sketching process was used to explore different pattern and fitting combinations. Inspiration was taken from modern basketball shoes and hiking boot. Their complex patterns and details were simplified and translated into a vintage high-top silhouette. The result was a shoe combining style with versatility. Wings around the ankle provide custom lacing options for a more secure fit. This would have been a performance selling point in the 1950s.
Materials were not always easily accessible in-house so outside sourcing was used. This required traveling to material markets and searching through endless suppliers to find the right colors and combinations. In turn, this developed a reliable business relationship for future projects.
Basketball players need to be able to move in any direction. To finish the theme of vintage performance, an interlocking “plus” motif utilizing a dot-shaped tread pattern provided traction when moving forward, backward, and side-to-side. The “plus” shape was used to enhance the simple characteristic of the shoe but also helped it to look functional. The Fila logo on the arch finishes the whole look.
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Fila DB High
As part of Fila’s collection to reinvent vulcanized comfort, the DB High is a modern interpretation of the vintage basketball shoe. The DB, short for double, represents two layers of cushioning: a soft insole and an injection phylon outsole.
The outsole added the comfort and weight of a performance running shoe but the outer appearance needed to compliment this new technology. The concept was to make a modern shoe that looked like it would have been functional during its time period.
