FILE PHOTO: Rosita Missoni poses before the Missoni Spring/Summer 2018 show at the Milan Fashion Week in Milan, Italy September 23, 2017.
Stefano Rellandini | Reuters
Italian designer Rosita Missoni, co-founder of the eponymous fashion house known for its bright and patterned styles, died on Thursday at the age of 93, a company official said.
She had launched the business in 1953 with her husband Ottavio Missoni, developing a brand that became popular for its colorful knitwear featuring geometric patterns and stripes, including the signature zigzag motif known as fiammato.
Born into a family of textile artisans close to the northern Italian town of Varese, Rosita studied modern languages.
On a trip to London in 1948 to improve her English, she met Ottavio, who was competing with the Italian 400 meters hurdles team at the Olympics in the city.
The Missoni brand gained international recognition and awards for its distinctive patterns and avant-garde use of textiles and an approach to fashion often compared to modern art.
It was also helped by what was dubbed the ‘battle of the bras’ in 1967.
Missoni had been invited to show at the Pitti Palace in Florence but before the models went out on the runways Rosita noticed that their bras were visible through their tops, ruining the intended color and pattern effect.
She told the models to remove their bras but, under the runway lighting, their outfits became totally transparent and the incident caused a sensation.
They were not invited to return the next year but Missoni was quickly on the covers of big-name fashion magazines such as Vogue, Elle and Marie Claire.
Their layered designs, full of patterns, caught the attention of a fashion world that was turning away from high fashion, 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 Missonis set up home next door, with most of their windows overlooking Rosita’s beloved Monte Rosa mountains.
Rosita remained creative director for the womenswear collections until the late 1990s, when she passed the task on to her daughter Angela.
The couple suffered tragedy in 2013 when Vittorio Missoni, their eldest son and the company marketing director, was killed in a plane crash off the coast of Venezuela.
Ottavio died in May 2013 at the age of 92, four months after their son’s plane had gone missing but before the wreckage had been found.
The brand expanded into home collections and hotels. In 2018 Italian investment fund FSI invested 70 million euros in the family-owned company in exchange for a 41% stake, aiming to strengthen the brand abroad.
Missoni picked Rothschild in 2023 as financial adviser to explore a potential sale of the family-owned company.