2017
MISSONI’S HEADQUARTERS IN SUMIRAGO
Sumirago is a village 15 km from Golasecca, Rosita Missoni’s birth place. Along with her son Luca and her daughter Angela, she is the owner of the homonymous fashion house.
Well known for its colorful garments, Missoni was founded by Rosita and her husband Ottavio “Tai” Missoni (1921-2013) in Gallarate in 1953.
Ottavio had a great talent for color and liked to experiment new forms of knits and weavings. He had a taste for Art and looked for inspirations in the work of the artists of the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s. He ended-up blurring the boundaries between art and fashion in the garments designed by the maison.
In 1968 the Missoni, now a family of five, found a piece of land on a hill facing Mount Rosa and made it a home for the factory and the family mansion.
The Missoni’s children have long taken positions of responsibility within the company organization. After Vittorio’s death – the elder brother – and Ottavio’s, in the annus horribilis 2013, the helm is now in the hands of Luca, also head of Research&Development, while Angela is Creative Director for the collections and Rosita is simply the boss.
Missoni’s strenght lays in the gift to be able to draw from art trends – Sonia Delaunay, Kandinsky, Balla, Severini and the Futurists, and Klee – or from other sectors of the textile trade – like interior decoration – ideas and concepts to be applied to couture and prêt-a-porter, so that the company garments stand-out among the competitors, especially for the use of color.
In April 2015, curated by Luciano Caramel, Luca Missoni and Emma Zanella, MA*GA – Gallarate Museum of Art – opened an exhition dedicated to Rosita and Ottavio Missoni, centered on the interaction with the XX Century European Art, the creativity and the entrepreneurship of a great Italian fashion house and the extraordinary culture and ingeniousness of its founders.
But, if you walk for five minutes in Autumn in the woods surrounding Sumirago and Missoni’s atelier, you’ll perceive how, along with Art, the Environment and the changing seasons have so far fundamentally influenced the creativity of the maison that elected “color” as the feature of its own singularity.
Testo italiano qui.
