Half a century ago, in 1975, a plain red marker and a crisp white polo jolted tennis out of its sartorial stupor. The big idea, dreamed up by FILA’s creative director Pierluigi Rolando, was simple: Draw vertical pinstripes on a shirt that superstar player Björn Borg would make famous, send it onto the court, and watch it cook.
And cook it did. These doodled-on stripes changed the sport — and, by association, FILA itself. Up to that point, tennis had been governed by an all-white dress code. And the Italian brand? It had only just entered the sport; FILA was still better known for the knitwear and warm, woolen underwear it had been making for alpine communities since 1911.
What an impact a few decades, and a bit of marker, can have. “[Rolando] wanted it to be visually striking and not just melt into all the other brands,” FILA Europe’s Creative Director, Peter Bader, told Highsnobiety. Mission accomplished: look at the kaleidoscopic breadth of tennis style today, and it’s hard to imagine the sport ever being so buttoned up.
Athletes have never been more free to put that shit on, clotheswise — and FILA helped to get them there. With that kind of lore behind the brand, it only made sense for Highsnobiety to follow up last year’s collaborative tracksuit, released as part of Milan Design Week, with a full collection launching this November, built on pieces from the FILA archives in Biella, Italy.
Made with love for the sport but built to fit into every wardrobe, the "The Rally Within" capsule includes a track jacket and pants, polos and T-shirts, low-profile sneakers, and a canvas tote (with a racquet fastener, naturally). It’s a solid lineup, elevated with subtle design elements that nod to FILA’s long history.
Including, yes, those pinstripes — inspired, ironically, by another sport a continent away.
“[American] baseball jerseys already had that pinstripe,” explains Bader. “So the question was: Why does tennis always have to stand back and be so clean and formal? Can’t tennis also branch out a bit and take inspiration from American sports, which were already much more visually striking?”
Rolando’s answer to that question, this fateful red-striped polo, still lives in FILA’s public-facing museum, housed next to the private archive. “It’s super old, and it’s kind of stained, but it’s a piece of history,” says Katarina Jukic, FILA Europe’s Head of Apparel Design. Though this pinstriped piece is integral to the brand, it wasn’t where the collection began. Instead, inspiration came from the 1986 Lawn Tennis collection, which Highsnobiety designer Sissi Goetze and the FILA team found deep in the archive nearly a year ago.
“It had that natural, very updated-for-today fit — a little boxy and cropped,” Jukic says. Goetze was sold. It’s as the saying goes: If the archive ain’t broke, don’t fix it. And so the new polo is a near one-to-one match, small details like a relaxed dropped shoulder and all, with its squared shape carried over to the tee.
Then came the pinstripe. Rather than redraw Rolando’s stripes, Goetze dialed down the visual volume to near-ASMR levels. “I wanted to create a new fabric but make it more subtle,” she says, adding: “I was looking for clues about what they’ve done. In the last corner of the archive, I pulled out a jacket with very narrow stripes in a shiny fabric, almost more like a football jersey.” The result is a piqué jacquard with a woven-in pinstripe, a quiet detail so subtle it requires some squinting… by design. “When you get closer, you can explore more,” Jukic says. “It’s not super visible to the eye.”
What is visible, however, is a Back to the Future-like time hop between styles. “The tracksuit jacket has a 70s touch because it’s tighter, but the pants are slightly baggier and more adapted to the Highsnobiety touch,” Bader explains, then moves on to the standout shoe: a blend of a nylon-and-fluffy-suede upper with a gummy sole, packaged in a timeless silhouette. “The foundational idea is a tennis shoe, but the end result has a contemporary, low-profile, early-2000s vibe. It’s something you could find on the runways from any brand, or in the very commercial space today as well.” A sleek daily stepper, in other words.
That’s the alchemy we’re cooking with. This 2026 collaboration might be built on a 70s-era doodle and a mid-80s polo, but it’s more than just another riff on contemporary nostalgia. When the Italian brand entered tennis in the 70s, it found a sportswear realm defined by elegance (no matter how sedate). “The shapes were always so much better back then, and the fit was perfect,” Goetze notes. “Once you have the good fit, you’re already there.” Consider this collaborative update on the classics round two of a partnership that’s clearly found its swing.
Highsnobiety and Fila's archive-inspired "The Rally Within" tennis capsule releases globally on November 4 at 3 PM CET, with early access through the app opening on November 3 at 3 PM CET.
