#ANGELASWORLD
#ANGELASWORLD
“From my parents I inherited an exciting profession and a life in touch with nature, a more organic relationship between life and work.” For Angela Missoni – the third child of the legendary Rosita and Ottavio who became the creative director of the family business twenty years ago, reconfiguring its identity and acquiring a prominent role in today’s ultra-competitive fashion scene – everything revolves around family. Unity and complicity between parents and children, which has been a priority for Rosita and that has inspired the life of Angela, a businesswoman and designer but first and foremost the mother of Margherita, Francesco and Teresa and the grandmother of Otto, Augusto and Zeno as well as a loving and caring daughter at the center of an extended family which includes siblings and nephews, a former husband and current partner, stepchildren, relatives, long-time and new friends, the husbands or partners of her daughters, the girlfriends of her son, and close associates. It also implies continuous comings and goings in her daily life, interferences which Angela calls emergencies that, over time, have given her a natural ability to interrupt herself in mid-sentence, quickly change the topic, shift, overlap and combine issues for her role of fashion designer as well as of president of the company while finding solutions for domestic matters of an everyday life.
#FAMILY
“The family has assumed a different importance over the years. Before, I had small children, a boyfriend and a job that was not as challenging as it is today. Now everything is an emergency: an emergency involving a parent, a sibling, children, and grandchildren... and a fiancé who feels neglected at this point. The family involves more things and occupies much of my time. It needs attention and requires answers...”
#VARESETHEPLACETOBE
Living in the province of Varese between Sumirago, where her parents established their company and home in the early seventies, and the hamlet of Brunello, Angela, her children and grandchildren all live a few miles from one another with the same landscape of mountain ranges, forests and lakes, in close contact with the changing seasons and hours of the day, irrevocably linked to a land of which family members post sunrises and sunsets, views and blossoming flowers on Instagram.
#LIFESTYLE
The house where Angela moved to a few years ago with her partner Bruno Ragazzi is a vast and fascinating space in the midst of nature. After finding the house, she redesigned and remodeled it, knocking it down and rebuilding it without following a particular time frame, creating
a space that could contain her large family, friends, moments of relaxation and celebration, and her collections of objects, furniture, and works of art. In her private life as in her work, she is a perfectionist, focusing on the smallest detail. She loves beauty in its most eccentric, unusual, and wondrous forms. And the new home, on which she worked for about four years, with its rationalist architecture and huge park with a view of the Monte Rosa mountain chain, is a convincing example. With its glass walls that create an extraordinary continuum between the interior and exterior, centuries-old trees and large flower pots, the changing colors of the sky between dawn and sunset and colorful reflections of lamps, mirrors, vitreous glass, ceramics, and neon lights or luminous objects by digital artists, it reflects Angela’s sensitivity and intelligence, culture and infinite curiosity, visionary vastness and lighthearted taste. More than a closed and private place, it is an environment in progress, a catalyzing and engaging theater open to the outside world, which she loves to keep changing, endlessly repositioning and assembling the pieces of her collections in different ways.
#INRUSTWETRUST
These items reveal her passion for flea markets and bricà-brac, travel souvenirs and her fascination with artisan crafts from various periods and of different ethnicity. Kitschy knickknacks, endless groups of baby deer and birds, and ritual hands or African heads interact with furniture by Paul R. Evans, Gio Ponti, Alessandro Mendini, or Jorge Pardo and contemporary artwork by Carla Accardi, George Condo, Vanessa Beecroft, Roger Selden, Kerstin Bratsch, Jenny Holzer, Tracey Emin, Marina Abramovic, Luigi Ontani, Do Ho Suh and Francesco Vezzoli. There are pieces by up-and-coming artists such as Benny Chirco, Brendan Fowler, David Casini and Riccardo Paratore, Anton Alvarez and Alessandra Roveda, which shows Angela’s penchant for discovering and promoting all possible expressions of talent. “What I like about collecting is being surprised by abandoned things, combining them and giving them their dignity,” she explains. Of course, there is no lack of color, patterns, prints, yarn, knit and fabric wallpaper, tapestries and patchwork rugs that are key elements of Missoni style and are inevitably found in the homes of the whole family.
#ROSITA
As Angela points out, “Missoni is color and fashion, but it is especially comfortable, enveloping and affectionate, that embraces and reassures you.” Knitwear thus becomes a lifestyle and an unconventional way of being, dressing and decorating. This material originated extraordinary inventions that she, as a child, observed closely and watched as it evolved in the family business.
While working as her mother’s assistant, she learned and experimented, ultimately gaining her mother’s respect. The turning point occurred in 1994, when Rosita herself asked Angela to start working on the main line and three years later to ufficially hand over the creative direction to her and, with it, the distinctive elements of a knitwear brand that had, at the time, existed for over forty years. “Twenty years ago, I immediately decided to transform the weight of the knits. At that point, Missoni was perhaps best known for its heavy winter textiles. I chose to make them lighter and worked on what was originally the most glamorous part of our production. I brought back the prints and silks that were part of the Missoni heritage that I remembered, and I developed new patterns and textures. In contrast with that study, I sought to give more structure to those light materials, inventing linings and facings that allowed me to make more structured garments like jackets, trousers and suits. That’s what I introduced: the possibility of ranging from trench coats to swimsuits. These pieces didn’t exist and have since become important and iconic over time.” At the same time, with indomitable innovative will, over these two decades Angela has redesigned and strengthened the company advertising and communication strategies. From the campaigns shot by future photography stars such as Mario Testino, Mario Sorrenti, Mert & Marcus to those with Steven Meisel, Mark Borthwick, Juergen Teller, Viviane Sassen and the latest ones with Harley Weir. From the runway shows that grew in scale and turned into one of the main and most beloved event of Milan Fashion Week to the perfectly redesigned interiors of the flagship stores, Angela has restored the original authoritativeness of the family brand, bringing it back as one of the most trendsetting style of today fashion. “I reintroduced in the collections many different fabrics and I transformed knits into fabrics. Meanwhile, loom technology made great progress. Knit lace, intarsia and even sneakers: knit fabric proved to be a material of the future. And it lets you produce and use exactly what you need and wasting the least possible yarn: this is always the most important aspect.”
#PATTERNS
Over the years, Angela has enlarged the zigzags, made staggered stripes, fading motifs, combining cut and serged knits with fully-fashioned garments, contrasting black and white with colorful lurex. The return of ra- schel lace, zigzags, fringe, mesh, embroidery, jacquard, patchwork, and layers, with put together of different motifs, made the Missoni language distinct and recognizable in the world. She transformed trench coats, ultra-light dresses with crossed tops, beach caftans, turbans and swimsuits into best-sellers, along with ribbed knits and menswear knit jackets. She projected into the fashion her personal celebration of freedom, informality and comfort, because unlike the impeccable and elegant Rosita and Margherita, Angela has a more nomadic and slightly gypsy spirit and her style consists of sarongs, wrap-around tops, cache-coeurs and amazing fetish jewelry. She is a woman on the go who loves to travel. She remains a curious observer of the culture of different countries. She prefers a wardrobe with versatile pieces that envelop the body and flatter the silhouette, and she has seduced time with her iconic fascinating personality.
#MOMENTS
“Reflecting on the past twenty years, I’ve experienced many moments and ways to create fashion. The system has evolved and has even been revolutionized. But I am proud that, despite the strong changes and globalization that has expanded the scale of companies and the market, Missoni has remained a small artisan business yet has preserved its image at an extremely high level. The brand has never been sullied, but cultivated like a rare pearl, precious, recognizable and respected on an international level... It’s true I haven’t been able to solve all company problems, but perhaps it’s because time unstoppably presents new ones... I feel like a machine that must provide answers and the ones I’m requested are always immediate.”
#ANGELA
“When I talked about Missoni, I always said ‘we’, using the first person plural. But now there are two generations – my generation and my children’s – that know Missoni only for what I have accomplished.”