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Patriarch of fashion brand Missoni dies in Italy

Thursday - 5/9/2013, 5:44pm  ET

FILE - In this Feb. 27, 2011 file photo Ottavio Missoni, right, and his daughter Angela acknowledge the applause of the audience after presenting their Missoni Fall/Winter 2011 collection, in Milan, Italy. Italian fashion company Missoni says its co-founder, Ottavio Missoni, has died in his home earlier on Thursday, May 9, 2013 in northern Italy. Missoni, who was 92, founded the iconic fashion brand of zigzagged-patterned knitwear along with his wife, Rosita, in 1953. The Missonis are a family fashion dynasty, with the couple’s children and their offspring involved in expanding the brand. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, File)

Associated Press



It was another sorrow for the family in a year that marks the 60th anniversary of their company's founding, following the disappearance in January of the Missonis' eldest child, company CEO Vittorio Missoni.

The 58-year-old disappeared with his wife and four others while flying in a small plane during a vacation to a Venezuelan island. They were never found, and the cause of the disappearance remains a mystery.

Known to friends by his nickname "Tai," Ottavio Missoni founded the company in 1953, along with his wife, Rosita Jelmini, who survives him. They went on to create a fashion dynasty, with the couple's three children and their offspring involved in expanding the brand.

"It was Tai and Rosita who founded, along with few others, Italian fashion in the 1950s," said Mario Boselli, chairman of the Milan Fashion Chamber who knew Missoni for decades. "We are speaking of a historical era, the start of ready-to-wear in Italy, that defined the success of 'Made in Italy.'"

Boselli described Missoni as "a pleasure, a marvel of great sympathy and great openness with an enormous human warmth."

Laura Biagiotti, who was among those early designers, said Missoni patterns "became almost a second flag for Italy."

"I have always admired Tai's vital energy, his joy in life, the ability to run a family and a company in a unique environment -- a little magical, made of creativity, originality and most of all in the spirit of teamwork," said Biagiotti, who also made her name in knitwear, earning the moniker "Queen of Cashmere."


His wife's family owned a textile factory and produced shawls, and the newlyweds started their own business in 1953 with an artisan's shop producing knitwear in Gallarate, near Milan.

At the beginning, they produced athletic wear, likely inspired by Missoni himself, who had been a track-and-field star specializing in 400-meter relays and hurdles. He won several national medals, and competed in the 1948 Olympics, finishing sixth in the 400-meter hurdles after he hit an obstacle.

At the beginning of that decade, during World War II, he was taken prisoner during the battle of El Alamein, and held for four years by the British.

The brand got its first break in 1958, when the Rinascente department store commissioned 500 colorful vertically striped shirt dresses -- the first to carry the Missoni label.

Missoni recalled in an autobiography published for his 90th birthday that one evening he and Rosita snuck down to view their creations displayed in the store window. The mannequins wore colorful blindfolds, and Missoni wrote that they heard a passerby remark: "Oh dear, poor things, thank goodness they covered the eyes because if they could only see themselves."

The criticism wasn't shared, and the Missoni brand gained quick popularity with its original striped and zig-zag patterns.


The Missonis, who often wore their own creations in everyday life, first showed their collection in Milan in 1966. The next year, a show in Florence of transparent tops sparked outrage, but they were ahead of a fashion trend that would later be picked up by no one less than Yves Saint Laurent, before spreading.

Missoni wrote later that his wife discovered just before the models were to go down the runway at the Pitti Palace that they had forgotten garments that we supposed to be worn under the sheer lame blouses.

"So, she sent them out without bras, and the lights made them transparent. The indulgent smiles and delight of the buyers and the guests contrasted with the protests of the organizers: 'What do they think, that Pitti Palace is the Crazy Horse cabaret?' And we weren't invited to the next shows," he wrote.

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