‘I’m always looking for something weird’: Palace’s Lev Tanju on his new role as creative director for Fila+

Lev Tanju loves to shop, though he’s trying to stop. Recent purchases have included a S/S 2015 Chanel satchel adorned with badges and peace signs from an LA consignment store (‘to me, it’s better than a painting’), a vintage Chrome Hearts belt (the brand is a current obsession), clothes to play golf (‘weird vintage knitwear and Gore-Tex’), and Charvet slippers from Paris. The Croydon-born designer admits he needs to ‘minimise’ and have a wardrobe clear-out. ‘I probably have around 200 T-shirts, then wear the same three every day. I buy things because I love them and never wear them. But I still appreciate them being there.’

Lev Tanju on his role as creative director for Fila+

It is Tanju’s unabashed love of clothes that has ensured the success of Palace, the skatewear label he co-founded in 2009 with Gareth Skewis. The pair knew each other from skating on London’s South Bank, and briefly worked together at Slam City Skates in Covent Garden. Palace was built from a desire to create something to rival the dominance that US brands like Supreme had over skatewear. In what would become the label’s tongue-in-cheek style, the name came from the scuzzy flat, affectionately called the ‘Palace’, that Tanju shared with a group of skaters near Waterloo station. Palace began with T-shirts – early designs were send-ups of Chanel and Versace – but quickly expanded into tracksuits, another signature of the label, and then a full wardrobe, recognisable for the ‘Tri-Ferg’ triangle logo, designed by legendary illustrator Fergus Purcell.

‘I didn’t expect people to want to buy the clothes straight away,’ says Tanju. ‘I was just making nice T-shirts. Then I made tracksuits, because I love tracksuits. We accidentally got into the swing of things and began working with other brands.’ This included a prolific slew of collaborations with the likes of Adidas, Ralph Lauren, Crocs, Gucci and even Wedgwood. Palace became known for the eclectic and the unexpected, a reflection of Tanju’s personal style. ‘I’m always looking for something weird.’

Tanju’s latest chapter is a role as creative director for Fila+, an offshoot of the Italian sportswear brand, launched in 2024. It started with a call from a friend that intrigued him enough to fly out to Biella, the northern Italian town where Fila is based. ‘I went to the archive, where I met people who had been working there for 20-odd years. It felt like family.’ Not long after flying to Biella, driven by ‘gut feeling’, he signed the contract. Tanju revealed his first collection last June via a series of images shot by Ryan McGinley, another longtime skateboarder, in Tuscany. That same month, he showed a second collection in a former industrial space in Milan, whereby a cast of characters populated a series of 1970s-style tableaux. The two collections set out Tanju’s intentions for Fila+: an eclectic wardrobe rooted in the brand’s sportswear past, though still defiantly his own vision. ‘I see it as the highlights of the last 110 years of the brand through the lens of what I think is cool,’ he explains, recounting a process he is used to after 15 years of Palace collaborations. ‘I can pull things out of an archive that someone might think is stinking, but I actually love it because it’s stinking. I like so many different things, and I’m not scared of mixing them.’

That said, when first approaching Fila+, he initially had plans to keep things ‘clean and concise, to be really simple’, but it wasn’t long until his intuition took hold. ‘Slowly, it was like my true self came out,’ he says. ‘It’s like a beautiful mess: I’ve always followed what I want to wear, not what does someone want to buy. I’m just like fuck it, I want to make stuff for myself.’ So there are velour tracksuits and cable-knit sweaters, working men’s acetate trousers and V-neck sweaters recalling vintage football jerseys, alongside puffer jackets slashed with panels of red, white and blue, Fila’s signature colours. Silhouettes tend towards a more 1970s fit than the baggy shapes of Palace (‘a looser bottom and a tighter top’), while two new versions of Fila’s ubiquitous F-Box logo appear throughout. The first is reworked into a red heart and appears on caps and ties, while the second is reimagined in the colours of the Italian flag. ‘I didn’t really want to change the logo too much, because to me it’s one of the best logos in the world.’

Tanju’s own first Fila purchase was a pair of the brand’s Grant Hill basketball boots, and early memories include watching West Ham and ACF Fiorentina play wearing Fila kits on TV as a child (back in Turkey, where Tanju’s family originates, his father was a professional footballer). In his Fila+ collections, there is a nostalgia for vintage sportswear: reference points for the first two collections include the on- and off-court Fila uniforms of tennis ace Björn Borg and a climbing collection designed for Reinhold Messner, who was the first to climb Mount Everest solo without the use of oxygen in 1980 (‘the Messner mountain stuff is unbelievable’). Tanju was also fascinated with the theatrical, charismatic figure of Pierluigi Rolando, Fila’s first creative director. In the 1970s, Rolando would transform a brand then known for manufacturing underwear into a global sporting powerhouse with the ‘White Line’ tennis collection. ‘He invented modern-day sportswear. It’s inspirational.’

Tanju says that he travels to Milan or Biella about once a month (plus he does ‘a lot of Zooms’). He wants his Fila+ collections to reflect the idiosyncrasies and innate elegance of Italian style, which he loves. ‘Italians have a gnarly sense of style: they are the best at running fashion houses, the best at food, they’re very passionate and I love the way they dress,’ he says. ‘An Italian guy on a scooter wearing a puffer jacket to me is cooler than a guy in New York wearing a puffer jacket.’ When he’s in Italy, he likes ‘eating pasta, eating pizza’ and, of course, shopping. In Milan, he enjoys wandering down Via Monte Napoleone, the high-end shopping street lined with the flagship stores of the Italian powerhouses Prada, Versace, Gucci et al. ‘When I’m uninspired, I love the experience of going into those places, looking at what’s going on, the colours, the fabrics. Then I just go and sit with a coffee and see what everyone’s wearing.’

But despite 15 successful years of Palace, and his name regularly appearing on the lists of fashion’s most influential figures, Tanju says he does not consider himself a part of that world. On Via Monte Napoleone, he is still an outsider looking in. ‘I don’t feel like a fashion designer. I make clothes – fashion is very different. A good fashion designer changes your perception of how people dress. I’m not really trying to do that, I’m trying to do something very functional that’s also cool.’ What he thinks he’s good at is ‘creating a feeling and a vision and a mood. I like selling the dream. It’s why I think I was a good choice for Fila. Maybe someone could have designed a better collection, but they wouldn’t have been able to do the marketing so well. You weigh it up. I think I’m a good ambassador. I love the brand.’

While early signs are already pointing to Fila+ being a success (Tanju has recently returned from a buzzy round-the-world tour to promote the collection, with stops in Seoul, LA, New York, Milan and London, with pieces from the initial collection already selling out), he says he’s not too hung up on how the collection is being received. ‘It’s interesting to see what people like from it, because there are things that I love, but you never know if I’m just 42 and having a midlife crisis,’ he laughs. ‘But I think as long as I follow what I like, then I’m never really worried, because that’s the way I’ve always worked, following my intuition. If you don’t like it, fair enough – I’m not going to change. Then whatever happens, I know I’ve stayed true to the things I love.’

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A version of this article appears in the January 2025 issue of Wallpaper* , available in print on international newsstands, on the Wallpaper* app on Apple iOS, and to subscribers of Apple News +. Subscribe to Wallpaper* today.