Born: November 20th, 1931
Died: January 2nd, 2025
Rosita Missoni who, with her husband, Ottavio, built a luxury clothing brand on a foundation of boldly colourful striped and zigzagged knitwear that helped make Milan a capital of Italian high fashion, has died at the age of 93.
What began in 1953 as a homespun venture for the Missonis was transformed in just a couple of decades into a leading fashion house with one of the world’s most recognisable brands.
If Emilio Pucci’s bold swirls helped define Italian fashion in the 1950s and 1960s, Missoni’s squiggly, striped and multicoloured space-dyed designs marked the 1970s.
At first, the Missonis sold their sweaters anonymously or under co-labels with known designers. Rosita eventually took over the design of the silhouettes, and Ottavio handled the patterns: space dyes, stripes, squiggles, chevrons, all in vivid colours.
Five years after the company’s founding, Missoni dresses could be purchased at La Rinascente, an upscale department store in Milan. Anna Piaggi, editor of Vogue Italia, had Missoni designs photographed for an editorial shoot in 1965. The family business had become a high-fashion brand.
Missoni’s first runway shows that – part-collection, part-performance art – were a precursor to the Instagrammable runway spectacles of the 2010s began the following year.
Over time, they made Milan a destination for fashion critics from around the world. The couple showed their next collection in Florence, at the Palazzo Pitti. When Rosita Missoni saw her models in the thin knit dresses that she and her husband had conceived, she asked them to remove their bras, which were showing through the fabric. What she hadn’t considered was how the stage lights would affect the transparency of the garments; the scandalous see-through dresses became the talk of the town, and the Missonis were not asked to show in Florence again. So they returned to Milan. Missoni’s presence on the calendar drew other northern Italian knitwear brands, whose factories had been renovated in the 1950s with money from the Marshall Plan.
By then, the Missonis had captivated the global fashion press. Diana Vreeland, editor of Vogue, featured Missoni in a 1969 spread – a big endorsement for the company and proof that colourful sweaters could be as viable an art form as couture gowns.
Entering the 1990s, the Missonis took steps to hand the company over to their children, putting sons Vittorio and Luca in charge of the business side and installing daughter Angela as head of design. Angela Missoni set the company up for growth in multiple business categories, establishing more than 20 sub-brands, including a lower-price label; a home decor line led by Rosita Missoni; and a now-shuttered hotel chain. Under Angela Missoni’s creative leadership, the brand has dressed stars such as Kerry Washington, Regina King, Cate Blanchett and Beyoncé.
Rosita Jelmini was born into a textile-manufacturing family November 20th, 1931, in Golasecca, in northern Lombardy, near Lake Maggiore. Like her grandparents before them, her parents, Diamante and Angelo Jelmini worked in the family factory, where Rosita spent much of her youth absorbing techniques and aesthetics, including the colourful zigzags that would become a Missoni signature.
Rosita, who grew up with two brothers, Alberto and Giampiero, was a sickly child. Her parents sent her away to school on the Ligurian coast, and living on a Mediterranean diet near the sea seemed to help.
Rosita met Ottavio, known to his friends as Tai, in 1948. She was a student in London studying English, and he was a hurdler with the Italian track-and-field team competing in the Summer Olympics there. The couple wed on April 18th, 1953, and began renting their first factory, in Gallarate, outside Milan, the same year. Ottavio had graduated from athlete to designer, fashioning uniforms for the Italian team before the 1952 Olympics.
Ottavio Missoni died at 92 in May 2013, just a few months after their son Vittorio was killed in a plane crash. Rosita Missoni is survived by her two other children, as well as her brother Alberto, nine grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren. – The New York Times