Rosita Missoni, co-founder of the Italian brand, has died at the age of 93, according to the specialized magazine. Women’s Wear Daily. Nicknamed the grandmother of fashion, the Italian created in 1953 with her husband Ottavio ‘Tai’ Missoni one of the most innovative brands of the time, and one of those that, to this day, are still present in the collective imagination when they talk about made in Italy.
At the end of the fifties it was not common for a company, much less focused on luxury, to create feminine knitted garments in impressive colors, designed to provide comfort and freedom of movement to the body. But the Missoni were above the style of the time, much more corseted in every sense of the term. Rosita knew first-hand the world of fabrics, since her family ran a textile company focused on home clothing. Ottavio, an athlete, competed in the 400 meters hurdles at the 1948 London Olympics. There they met. Shortly after, he and a friend created Venjulia, a sports brand that locally marketed modern knitted tracksuits. Until, after getting married, Rosita decided to put her family’s experience at the service of Ottavio’s designs.
Missoni was already born with an experimental vocation: in the early years, in their home workshop in Galleteria (Italy) they investigated forms of weaving until they found one, based on the use of several needles, that allowed them to create innovative geometric motifs. Inspired by Italian mosaics, they created the now famous zigzag motif. And it was precisely the avant-garde (and irreverence) that turned Missoni into a brand of global influence. In 1967 the couple was invited to a fashion show at the Florentine Palazzo Pitti, today the headquarters of the Pitti Uomo men’s fair and then the headquarters of the incipient Italian fashion week. Rosita gave the order to her stylists to remove the models’ bras, because their semi-transparent knitted designs allowed them to be seen and, above all, because they did not match the freedom of movement on which her entire production was based. They didn’t come back. But it wasn’t necessary; That show caught the attention of two of the most influential women of the time, the stylist Anna Piaggi and Diana Vreeland, then editor-in-chief of the North American edition of Vogue. In reality, Missoni garments were a stylized and luxurious version of the bohemian and almost unisex garments that were beginning to be seen on the street and that would live their golden age with the global emergence of the hippy in the seventies. If they were already wearing the colorful tunics of Ossie Clark and Pucci, shortly after the jet set of the time would also delight in Missoni’s zigzag knitted pieces to reflect that hedonism typical of the time. “Their knitwear has become international status symbols, like Vuitton bags or Gucci shoes,” he wrote. The New York Times in 1973.
In the following decades Missoni, already converted into an Italian institution, saw how its aesthetic influence was diluted in pursuit of other brands with more maximalist and exuberant aesthetics, hence Rosita decided to expand the business by returning to its origins, that is, launching clothing of home and upholstery with the emblematic zigzag. In 1997 he retired from fashion to dedicate himself to this new division focused on interior design. Ottavio would do the same and recycle himself as a theater and opera costume designer. “To dedicate yourself to this you have to have curiosity and passion, and my passion has run out,” he said. It was then that his daughter Angela began to take charge of the creative direction, his son Luca the marketing of the company and Vittorio as executive director until his death in 2013 in a plane accident, the same year that Ottavio died.
In addition to her audacity when designing, in the midst of the postwar period, garments based on color and rebellion, Rosita Missoni stood out for not taking her fashion company as a lifestyle, but as a business. Although the firm was earning more and more, especially in the seventies, the couple decided to grow at a sustainable and unambitious pace: “Tai always said that there is no point in making money if you don’t have time to spend it later.” ”, he recalled in an interview with The Guardian.
Her daughter Angela demonstrated the same philosophy in 2012, when she retired “so as not to have an agenda and to be able to go to the beach,” as she declared in the magazine The Business of Fashion. A year earlier, they had sold 41.2% of the company to the Italian investor Fondo Strategico (FSI). After Filipo Grazioli’s brief two-year stint as creative director, a few months ago it was announced that it would be Alberto Caliri, with the firm since 1998, who would be in charge of coordinating the brand’s design. Somehow, everything still stays at home.
