Fila and Guillermo Vilas: Another legendary chapter of sports fashion history

Next to Bjorn Borg, Guillermo Vilas was the second most prominent face representing Fila tennis fashion during the 1970s, also shaping the classic Fila vintage look by wearing marvellous designs and blazing colours. He burst onto the tennis scene in the early 1970s and with his great game and charisma quickly captured the hearts of fans across the world. In 1977, Vilas had a 46 match winning streak on any surfaces (still unrivalled), consecutively won seven single titles and a total of 16 in that year! But despite of these impressive results, he never was world no. 1 in the 1977 ATP rankings. Instead he was year-end world no. 2, behind Jimmy Connors. However, at least World Tennis magazine gave Vilas the well deserved 1977 world no. 1 ranking.

Other than in the case of the brand’s flagship player Bjorn Borg, Fila didn’t dedicate own official fashion lines to Vilas who signed with the Italian company in 1976. Although, analogous to the Fila Bj badge, beginning from 1978 there was a signature GV badge that Vilas’ shirts were equipped with at tournaments, it was not included on the same type of shirts available on the market. That GV badge looked rather poor, though, it was totally uneven and not standardised, even looking like hand-embroidered, not professional at all. Every GV badge was different. And there wasn’t any Fila Vilas GV neck tag. Another major difference to the Borg Bj badge: While the latter was a single entire piece of badge, the Fila/GV combination consisted of two parts, with the GV badge just placed next to the Fila F logo.

This fragmentation, the state of being improvisational and not a firm part of the F logo, and the poor, careless quality of the GV badge reflect very well that Guillermo Vilas didn’t play such an important role for Fila as Bjorn Borg did. The GV badge was sometimes complemented by an embroidered Vilas writing patch that was placed on the right sleeve or chest. In other cases, Vilas only had the Vilas writing patch on his shirt or tracktop, there was some variation.

However, the fact that the GV badge was isolated from the F badge, had meant that it was virtually free, free to move from Fila to Ellesse, when Vilas got contracted with the competing Italian company from 1 January 1980. While I haven’t ever seen the GV badge on Vilas’ Ellesse Polo shirts in the 80s, he used to have it on his tracktops sometimes. And it was also included on the commercially available Vilas Ellesse track tops for a certain time. Also during his Ellesse Vintage era, Vilas wore fantastic looking tennis garments, contributing a lot to the great deal of popularity Ellesse earned back then. From a fashion point of view, his career splits into two major eras: The Fila era (1970s) and the Ellesse era (1980s). The history of both brands is inseparably linked to the name of Guillermo Vilas.

Vilas ended his career in 1989, after almost 20 years on the ATP tour. Many people considered his demission far too late, because the then 37 year-old had long passed the prime of his career, only having won a very few matches from 1987 to 1989. But if Vilas retired too late, Borg retired too early ­ regarded from a fan’s point of view at least. Champions come and go, and they alone decide when it’s time to say good-bye.

Fila (mostly Fila UK) has very successfully reissued a range of Fila Vilas clothes in the past years. The essential “Mivvi” polo shirt was relaunched in various colour combinations, and also the “Vantaggio” tracktop in two different colour combinations. The latest bunch of Fila Vilas reissue clothes we have seen in spring 2008, including a Mivvi tank top in two different colour combinations. In addition to these regular reissues, two classic Fila “Vilas clothes” (warm-up and polo shirt) were part of the luxury “1 of 500” collection Fila put on the market at the end of 2006. But strangely enough, in the respective product descriptions, Vilas’ name isn’t mentioned at all. In view of the great contribution the Argentinean made to Fila in the 1970s, this really is a pity.

In recent times Fila have re-issued many of vilas daring designs the best seller is the track top worn by Danny Dyer in The Business shop scene and Nick Loves the Firm has one of the best designs to date the Fila Vintage Alley Track Top as worn by lead charachter Bex in the pub scene- whose the dry Lunch where ginger Terry gets humiliated.