“The Missoni myth is one of normality. They are the gods of knitwear, of pullovers, of simple dressing for everyday life, however costly. They are husband and wife. He's tall and she's small; he's very good-looking and she volitive: they're like a couple out of a fifties musical. They've been together for ages; in fact they're getting on, they've got grown up children, they're grandparents (…) Normal, thoroughly normal, a real treat: just like you and me. The Missonis have taken years and years to create their myth,” The Italian Look Refected by Silvia Giacomoni
In the early '60s, Luis Hidalgo, buyer at La Rinascente, suggested Italian fashion journalist Maria Pezzi to go and meet Ottavio and Rosita Missoni, definying them as "the three G's: gentle, genial and generous". Pezzi agreed and was fascinated by the husband and wife team and by their colourful knits with zigzag patterns. Rather than using words, the late Pezzi claimed, it would have been better to draw the knitwear they produced to give a better idea of the graphic and geometric effects the duo created with their looms. Yet fashion was just one side of the family: the history of the Missonis was indeed told throughout the years also in different contexts: Italian sport journalists like Gianni Brera often wrote about the atheletic career of Ottavio, who died on Thursday in his home in the town of Sumirago.
Born in 1921, in Dubrovnik and growing up in Zadar, at the time part of the Italian territory, Ottavio "Tai" Missoni studied in Trieste and Milan, even though, as he recounted in his biography published in Italy in 2011, he preferred sport to studying. In the late '30s he was already a student champion and recordman. The war and four years of imprisonment in Egypt interrupted his career that he soon resumed at the end of the conflict.
In 1948, he took part in the Olympic Games in London as a member of the Italian 400m hurdles team. In London he met Rosita Jelmini who was studying there and in 1953 they got married, starting their adventure in knitwear. Ottavio already had some experience in garment manufacturing as he had been producing since 1948 in Trieste the trademark knitted "Venjulia" tracksuits also adopted by the Italian Olympic team.
The duo set up their first factory in the basement of their home in Gallarate, producing garments for Biki and, in 1958, colourful stripy shirt dresses for La Rinascente. Little by little, they developed new methods, working with different materials and multiple colours, coming up with a new concept of elegance based on individualism.
In the '60s the Missonis collaborated with Christiane Bailly; in 1964 the duo visited Paris and asked Emmanuelle Khanh to do a collection together. The French designer saw this opportunity as a chance to inject her fresh and young ideas into Missoni’s advanced knitwear and very gladly accepted. The results of this collaboration were presented in 1966 at the Gerolamo Theatre in Milan with a fun catwalk show.
A year later the Missoni team presented at the Pitti tradeshow their new collection. At the very last minute, Rosita realised the models’ underwear didn’t match with their futuristic and thin lame knits, so she sent the girls out without anything underneath, causing a little scandal while anticipating the "nude look". Scandalised, the organisers decided not to invite the couple at the next Pitti, but by then the fashion critics and buyers were hooked and success arrived also thanks to innovative catwalk shows such as the one at the Solari swimming pool in Milan with models floating on the water sitting on inflatable armchairs and sofas (by Quasar Khanh) pushed around by swimming champions.
American buyers dubbed Missoni's creations as "put together" designs, to highlight how the garments allowed customers to freely create their own style: the wearers could indeed pick and mix jumpers and trousers, skirts and tops, and create perfectly coordinated or uncoordinated outfits following their personal taste. The confirmation of their success, supported by prominent fashion editors such as Anna Piaggi (Ottavio stated about her: "Anna is a great character; she has very sensitive antennae, is professional to a degree, is always open-minded") and Diana Vreeland, arrived in 1973 when Tai and Rosita received the Neiman Marcus Fashion Award.
“We weren't born as designers, but as people who did things. They called us 'stilisti', designers, because they recognised a style in our products. We were only aware of creating fashion when people started to talk about it, after Anna Piaggi came to see us because she'd noticed some of our things at La Rinascente. Only later did we realise what was happening in the fashion world, what problems there were to do with image. We tried to learn, and we coped as a result, but always on our own. I used to do up the parcels and keep the accounts, but when I realised that the main thing was creativity, that the company worked because of the type of product it was manufacturing, I threw myself into that side of things, and so did Rosita,” Ottavio Missoni, 1984
When Missoni appeared on TV he never played the part of the designer; both Tai and Rosita also refused to do television adverts and publicity in certain newspapers and magazines. In the '80s, as the brand expanded also in other sectors through licensing deals, critics stated that the Missonis had done for knitwear what Le Corbusier did for concrete and Pucci did for prints - they gave it personality and autonomy.
Wool, mohair, silk, cotton, elasticised and Lurex yarns were employed to create herringbone-like motifs, abstract designs, asymmetrical decorations or zigzagging stripes, at times applied on pieces layered one on top of the other.
Ottavio and Rosita's vibrantly pictorial graphic effects called to mind dynamic and bright paintings such as those created by Giacomo Balla, Umberto Boccioni and Carlo Carrà, artists belonging to the Futurist movement. A first exhibition featuring Missoni's work analysed from an artistic point of view was organised in the '70s in Venice; their creations were then presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 1981 Ottavio's patchworks were also exhibited as innovative tapestries first in Milan and then at the Berkeley Art Museum, University of California.
In the meantime, while the company expanded into interior design founding the MissoniHome brand, directors and costume designers started turning up in Sumirago to pick up pieces for their films: Burt Lancaster donned Missoni cardigans in Luchino Visconti's Gruppo di famiglia in un interno; Mariangela Melato appeared in patchwork jumpers in Mario Monicelli's Caro Michele; Henry Fonda was pictured in a Missoni sweater when he got an Oscar for his final film role in On Golden Pond and Missoni's designs reappeared on Maria Schell in Hugh Brody's Nineteen Ninteen.
Nino Manfredi became a puzzling case also for Tai: the Italian actor wore in the film Nudo di donna a Missoni cardigan that soon became a Manfredi trademark. The actor regularly appeared in a Missoni jumper at festivals and on TV adverts (Tai joked in interviews saying that Manfredi had got a Missoni tattooed on his skin...) and was even buried in a Missoni design.
Charlotte Rampling got married in a design by Missoni, while Rudolf Nureyev's long and colourful knitted coat was often showcased in quite a few exhibitions about the dancer's costumes (and Nureyev in turn also became an inspiration for some of the house collections).
"We buy raw yarn and we dye it. We have hand-looms for making models and normal knitwear looms - I say normal, but actually our fabrics are so complicated that it takes an hour to make one metre. You have to realise that in one collection I may use up to fifteen or twenty different yarns, each one the result of perhaps thirty dyes; and in one garment there may be three different types of yarns, each one in different shades," Ottavio Missoni, 1984
Tai often claimed he was amazed by the fact that people working in very different fields, from actors and actresses to athletes, liked their designs as some deemed them elegant, others found them extremely comfortable. Yet the Missonis' favourite link outside the fashion industry remained the one with the stage.
In 1983 the company created the costumes for Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor" at Milan's La Scala. The opera took pace in Scotland, a place the Missonis naturally considered as the perfect location for their wool designs. For the occasion they dressed the entire choir, producing all the costumes in Sumirago and following all the rehearsals in Milan.
Further collaborations followed: the Missonis dressed two youth orchestras, Claudio Abbado's and Gino Negri's, and created the golden fleece for the "Medea" ballet (1990) with costumes by Franca Squarciapino. One of the most important events that reunited fashion and sport and to which the family collaborated was the opening ceremony for the 1990 World Soccer Championships. The house made for this occasion colourful costumes representing Africa (documented through Maria Pezzi's drawings).
In the '90s the brand also created costumes included in "Step Into My Dream" for The Parsons Dance Company and, a few years later, the knit space-dyed stretch suits for the acrobatic performances by the Aeros company.
Rather than surviving the crisis, the main goal of the most recent years for the Missonis was how to preserve the image of products originally made on Coperdoni looms in Sumirago, while innovating the brand, that in the meantime kept on being honoured through awards (Rosita won Elle Decoration UK's "Best Fabric Award" in 2003 and Elle Decor International Design Award in 2005 and she was also elected Createur 2007 for Maison et Objet) and exhibitions such as "Workshop Missoni: Daring to be Different" (the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London, 2009).
While the company extended the brand to Missoni Hotels in Edinburgh and Kuwait, it also launched collaborations with Havaianas, Converse, and Target, while turning to experimental filmmaker Kenneth Anger to shoot the advert for the A/W 2010 collection.
Missoni was born as a family business and family remained central in all their ventures and activities: Ottavio and Rosita's three children all work for the brand while granddaughter Margherita, Missoni's accessories designer, is also the label's ambassador. To strengthen the idea of the brand being a family business, all the members often appeared in advertising campaigns such as the one shot by photographer Juergen Teller at James Brett’s Museum of Everything.
In more recent years, Ottavio dedicated himself to painting and tapestry, publishing his autobiography, Una Vita sul Filo di Lana (A Life on the Woollen Thread) in 2011. Last year during the London Olympic Games, his sport achievements were remembered through dedicated window shops and unofficial music tracks.
In January 2013 eldest child and company chief executive, Vittorio disappeared with his wife and four others while flying in a small plane over the coast of Venuzuela. The missing group remains presumed dead. Ottavio, who often remarked in interviews that he himself was amazed at the fact that, from a sportsman and athlete, he had turned into a successful fashion designer, is survived by his wife Rosita, his two other children, Luca and Angela (who has designed the ready-to-wear collections since 1996), and grandchildren, who seem to have inherited his passion for life.
In a 2009 interview Margherita stated: "My grandparents and my mother Angela taught me everything I know for what regards this industry, but they also taught me to distance myself from the fashion universe. A great passion for our job runs into the family, but we do also know that this is not the most important thing in the world, so we live our lives with lots of irony and detachment, since, after all, it’s just clothes."
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