Rosita Missoni, who has died aged 93, came out of the historic heartland of Italian textiles in northern Lombardy, and though she travelled worldwide for decades and the Missoni fashion and decor brand became famous globally, she remained devoted to her native terroir. All the artistic, artisanal, and ever-inventive technological skills that sustained the company’s success over 70 years were as much part of the locality as its mountains and lakes.
The other company founder, her husband, Ottavio (Tai) Missoni, was originally from the shores of the Adriatic, but was working in knits, and on marriage migrated to her territory. Theirs was a union of complementary talents – Tai was an artist of great colour gifts who choreographed how yarns should be fed into which machine to knit what pattern, while she shaped the firm’s overall fashion direction and uses of the output.
