The family-owned business announced on Thursday that Italian designer Rosita Missoni, who co-founded the fashion brand of the same name, which is renowned for its vivid and patterned designs, has passed away at the age of 93.
According to a Missoni statement, Rosita died quietly on January 1, 2025, and was hailed as a trailblazer in the Italian and global fashion industries.
Together with her husband Ottavio Missoni, she had started the company in 1953. Together, they created a brand that gained popularity for its vibrant knitwear with stripes and geometric designs, including the fiammato, a recognizable zigzag pattern.
Rosita studied modern languages and was born into a family of textile makers near Varese in northern Italy.
She met Ottavio, who was a member of the Italian 400-meter hurdles squad competing in the city on an English language study trip to London in 1948.
The Missoni brand received accolades and recognition on a global scale for its unique designs, innovative use of textiles, and fashion philosophy that is frequently likened to modern art.
The 1967 battle of the bras, as it was known, also aided it.
Before the models walked the runways, Rosita saw that Missoni’s bras were showing through their tops, spoiling the desired color and pattern impact. Missoni had been invited to show at Florence’s Pitti Palace.
She instructed the models to take off their bras, but the lights from the runway made their clothing completely transparent, and the incident went viral.
Despite not being asked to return the following year, Missoni soon found herself on the pages of prestigious fashion magazines like Marie Claire, Elle, and Vogue.
They became the standard bearer of the so-called put together style after their layered designs attracted the attention of a fashion industry that was moving away from high fashion.
With most of their windows facing Rosita’s favorite Monte Rosa mountains, the Missonis moved in next door when the company relocated its base to the Italian town of Sumirago, north of Milan.
Up until the late 1990s, Rosita continued to serve as the womenswear collections’ creative director before handing the reins over to her daughter, Angela.
When Vittorio Missoni, the company’s marketing director and eldest son, died in a plane crash off the coast of Venezuela in 2013, the couple was devastated.
Four months after the disappearance of their son’s plane but before the wreckage was discovered, Ottavio passed away in May 2013 at the age of 92.
The brand branched out into hotels and home collections. The company received a 41% ownership in 2018 after an investment of 70 million euros from the Italian investment fund FSI.
In 2023, Missoni hired Rothschild as a financial advisor to look into a possible corporate sale.
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