Elisa Anzoline and Julia Segretti
MILAN, – Italian designer Rosita Missoni, co-founder of the eponymous fashion house known for its bright and exemplary styles, died on Thursday at the age of 93, a company spokesman said.
She opened the business in 1953 with her husband Ottavia Missoni, developing a brand that became popular for its colorful knitwear with geometric patterns and stripes, including the signature zigzag motif known as fiammato.
Rosita was born into a family of textile masters near the city of Varese in northern Italy, and studied modern languages.
On a trip to London in 1948 to improve her English, she met Ottavio, who was competing with the Italian 400m hurdles team at the Olympics in the city.
The Missoni brand has received international recognition and awards for its distinctive patterns and avant-garde use of textiles and an approach to fashion that is often compared to modern art.
This was also helped by what was called the “bra battle” in 1967.
Missoni was invited to show at Palazzo Pitti in Florence, but before the models took to the catwalks, Rosita noticed that their bras were visible through the top, which spoiled the intended color and effect of the picture.
She ordered the models to remove their bras, but under the lights of the catwalk, their outfits became completely transparent, and the incident caused a furore.
They weren’t invited back the following year, but Missoni quickly found herself on the covers of famous fashion magazines such as Vogue, Elle and Marie Claire.
Their layered designs, full of patterns, caught the attention of the fashion world, which was turning its back on haute couture, and became the standard bearer of the so-called “put together” style.
When the company moved its base to the Italian town of Sumirago, north of Milan, the Missani family settled in a nearby house, most of whose windows offered a view of Rosita’s beloved Monte Rosa mountains.
Rosita remained the creative director of the womenswear collections until the late 1990s, when she passed the task on to her daughter Angela.
The couple suffered a tragedy in 2013 when Vittorio Missoni, their eldest son and the company’s marketing director, died in a plane crash off the coast of Venezuela.
Ottavia died in May 2013 at the age of 92, four months after their son’s plane disappeared but before the wreckage was found.
The brand has expanded into home collections and hotels. In 2018, the Italian investment fund FSI invested 70 million euros in the family company in exchange for a 41% stake to strengthen the brand abroad.
Missoni selected Rothschild in 2023 as a financial advisor to explore a possible sale of the family company.
This article was created from an automated news agency feed with no text changes.
