  A fragile topological insulator (FTI) can be viewed as an almost-atomic
insulator, with emergent negative charges localized at certain real space
points, even though the underlying lattice Hilbert space contains only
positively charged states. Fragile topology in free fermion systems has been
fruitfully studied using modern topological band theory. However, the concept
is well defined even for strongly correlated systems, and fragile states that
cannot be realized within free fermion band theory exist abundantly. In this
work we propose a rather general parton construction for such
correlation-enabled FTIs. In our parton construction the associated gauge
symmetries are completely Higgsed, resulting in only short-range entangled
states. The effective negative charges in the FTIs emerge naturally as the
remnants of negatively charged partons. For spinful electrons with $SU(2)$
spin-rotation symmetry, the fragile phases can be viewed as FTIs of charge-$2$,
spin singlet bosonic Cooper pairs. We discuss a few examples of correlated FTIs
for both spinless and spinful fermions, including some "featureless Mott
insulators" on the honeycomb lattice previously discussed in the literature.
