Missoni

Missoni was founded in 1953 in Gallarate, Italy by Ottavio (Tai) Missoni and Rosita Jelmini Missoni, who started a small knitwear workshop producing tracksuits for Italian Olympic athletes. The brand's foundational thesis evolved through the 1960s into something singular: technicolour space-dyed knitwear with the zigzag and flame-stitch patterns that became the house signature. The 1967 Pitti Palace show — at which Rosita asked models to remove their bras to avoid the visual interference of underwear under the lightweight knit, accidentally creating the brand's most famous press moment — established Missoni as an international name. The Missoni vocabulary has remained anchored to the same elements across seven decades: chevron knits, flame-stitch sweater dresses, multi-coloured fringed scarves, knit dresses in extraordinary colour palettes, and the saturated patchwork knit that has been continuously rewritten. Angela Missoni led creative direction from 1997 to 2021 and was succeeded by Filippo Grazioli (2021-2024), with Alberto Caliri stepping in as overall image director from 2024. Missoni remains family-controlled by the Missoni family with a minority stake held by FSI investment fund since 2018. The brand operates flagships in Milan (Via Sant'Andrea), Paris (Rue Saint-Honoré), New York (Madison Avenue), Tokyo (Aoyama), plus the Missoni Home line. The brand's seventy-year coherence around colour-saturated knit craft is genuinely unusual in Italian fashion.