Biography

ROSITA MISSONI

Rosita and her husband Ottavio Missoni were at the helm of Missoni SpA for 50 years, together creating a unique, inimitable style that’s admired all over the world. In 1997 she handed the reigns over to her sons Vittorio and Luca and, for fashion, her daughter Angela, and has since devoted herself exclusively to the MissoniHome collections.

When people speak about Missoni, it comes natural to say “the Missonis,” since the story of the brand is the story of a couple: Of Ottavio, a Dalmatian athletics champion with a background in sports wear, and Rosita, with her family’s apparel and household linen business. The two met in 1948 and married in 1953.

Combining their experiences led to the birth of a company that took one of the finest examples of Italian products around the world - a style that’s absolutely unmistakable for its mélange of colors, stitches, and combinations of iridescent hues that have never been seen before. In the beginning there were simply strip es, si nce the machines only did that. But then over time more patterns were created that were increasingly original and creative until it became an art. And this is the same art that continues to inspire Rosita in her collections for MissoniHome.
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Luca MISSONI

Tai and Rosita Missoni’s second son, Luca spent his childhood playing in the workshops and storehouses of the family factory. He was only nine when his mother Rosita chose one of his own designs to create a jacquard motif for a dress in the women winter collection of 1966. In the mid ‘70s he began working full time for the family company specializing in the development of knitwear design and still today this remains one of his specialty areas sparking interactions between technical and creative processes. Formerly creative director for the Missoni Menswear and Missoni Sport collections, he’s currently the Head of Special Events and is directing the Missoni Archive developing it into a Foundation project.

Over the years he curated retrospective exhibitions such as Missonologia (Firenze and Milano, 1994), Opera (Sezon Museum, Tokyo, 1996) and more recently Caleidoscopio Missoni (Musei Provinciali, Gorizia, 2006). In 2002 he had his first personal exhibition as a photographer at the Arthu r Roger Gallery in New Orleans. Recently he designed the costumes for the contemporary dance show Aeros (Milan, 2005) which will premiere in New York in Spring 2008.

He lives in Varese, Italy, and New York with his wife Judith, an American artist, and their three children: Jennifer (22, an actress), Michelangelo (15) and Madeleine (11).
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