Rosita Missoni, Italian fashion designer, dies aged 93

Rosita Missoni, the esteemed Italian fashion designer who co-founded the eponymous knitwear brand, has died aged 93.

Internationally admired for her colourful fashion house, which she established with her husband, Ottavio, in 1953, Missoni came to be regarded as fashion royalty for being one of a group of designers who brought the Italian ready-to-wear industry to a global market in the 1950s and 60s.

In the subsequent decades, Missoni became a household name, and the couple were often described as “colour geniuses”; their use of kaleidoscopic prints and the famous zig-zag motif became synonymous with the joys of the Italian dolce vita.

Models and a dog backstage at the Missoni show at Milan fashion week in September 2019. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

Born Rosita Jelmini in Golasecca, in the Varese region of Lombardy, in 1931, Missoni met her husband during a study break in London in the summer of 1948: he was competing in the final of the 4 x 400-metre hurdles of the Olympic Games and she was learning English at a Hampstead boarding school.

After marrying in 1953, the couple established a small knitwear store in Gallarate, north of Milan, before putting down roots in nearby Sumirago where they built their home and factory.

They caused a furore in 1967 when, during a fashion show at the Pitti Palace in Florence, Missoni sent braless models wearing sheer tops down the catwalk, and were briefly banned from showing there. However, after being championed by the then American Vogue editor, Diana Vreeland, the fashion editor Anna Piaggi, and the founder of the British retailer Browns, Joan Burstein, the couple weathered the storm, and began focusing on their signature knitwear, which became central to the brand’s success.

According to the trade journal Women’s Wear Daily, the zigzag patterns were made using Raschel machines which are sometimes used to make swimwear and blankets. “My grandparents had used them to make multicolored embroidered shawls with big rose patterns and long fringes, all hand-knotted, the kind you throw on lampshades,” Missoni said.

The couple’s three children, Vittorio, Luca and Angela, and grandchildren all became integral to family business, regularly fronting advertisements which were captured by their long-term collaborator, the photographer, Juergen Teller.

In 1996, Angela and Luca took over the creative side while Vittorio became the chief executive. Missoni continued to work on the Missoni Home arm of the family business, including after the minority-stake sale of the brand to Fondo Strategico Italiano in 2018.

In early 2013, her son Vittorio died in a plane crash, aged 58, and her husband, Ottavio, died shortly after, in May of the same year, aged 92.

A keen traveller, avid collector of art and famous thrift-market devotee, towards the end of her life Missoni regularly invited interior magazines to photograph her Sumirago home, confirming her reputation as one of the world’s most influential tastemakers. In 2022, she told the Observer Magazine: “I have had the privilege of living a long life and I take great pleasure in sharing our home.”

Missoni is survived by Luca and Angela, her nine grandchildren, and their families.