VOGUE LIVING VIEW
ITALY is celebrated around the world as a cultural mega hub — rich in art, architecture, cinema, fashion, food, literature, music and design. But there is one basic element at the heart of it all. By Stephen Todd
La famiglia. It’s as much a part of brand Italia as pasta, Ferrari and Negroni. Italian clan names echo across the ages, from the embattled Renaissance nobility of Orsini, Cesarini and Medici to 20th-century royalty like Versace. Even Hollywood antiheroes like Vito Corleone and his rambunctious brood serve to reinforce the legendary stature of the family in Italian culture.
Italy’s design industry is no different. While globally venerated for its rich history, ceaseless innovation and ongoing industrial vigour, its true X factor is family. It’s the roots of the genealogical trees that allow the new branches to flourish, at the same time anchoring an industry that still holds sway around the world today. By transmitting knowledge from one generation to the next, Italian brands mapped out modernism, charting a path from the preindustrial artisan workshop to the factory to a brave new world in which the most enduring companies are using advanced technology to retain a competitive edge.
Among the first designers to charter this trajectory was Osvaldo Borsani. Born in 1911 to a family with a long tradition of artisanal furniture-making, Borsani was apprenticed to his father’s carpentry workshop at age 14. At 22 he enrolled to study architecture at
the Polytechnic University of Milan and quickly came under the influence of the early modernists Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It was this new, industrial design approach he would bring back to the family business when he officially joined the company after graduation. With his roots in the 19th-century decorative arts, Borsani would become a firebrand of 20th-century modernism, eventually founding Tecno with his twin brother, Fulgenzio, in 1953 and thus spearheading the high-tech movement by the time of his death in 1985.
Rosita Missoni’s family story is similar to Borsani’s, even if their aesthetic and expertise are radically different. Born Rosita Jelmini in the northern Italian town of Golasecca, her early memories are of the family factory, T& J Vestor (founded in 1921), which specialised in fabrics for the household — bedspreads, rugs, upholsteries and the like. “The factory was my playground and my fashion school,” says Rosita. “I grew up among yarns, fabrics, embroideries and fashion magazines.”
When Rosita, now 88, met her husband-to-be Ottavio ‘ Tai’ Missoni, he was an Olympic track-and-field athlete who had just started a small business using knitting machines to create sportswear. “Following my family training, we decided to add some sweaters and knitted outfits to the active sportswear,” she recalls. ››