The Missoni Family Shares Their Life in Parties

Rosita Jelmini (above, top, at age 2) was born in Golasecca, Italy, but she was a 16-year-old student in London when she met her future husband, Ottavio Missoni (above), a 27-year-old who was in town to compete in the 400-meter hurdle race at the 1948 Olympics. “I was a student, living in the cheapest place, just next to the flame, and underneath there was the exit of the athletes,” she recalls. “His number was 331. Three-three-one is seven, and seven was the lucky number of my grandparents—both were born in 1877.” Ottavio placed sixth in the race, but he won Rosita’s heart on their first date, when they met in Piccadilly Circus under the statue of Cupid.

The Missonis started their label in 1953, which was also the year Rosita and Ottavio (above, with their wedding cake) were married. “I realized he was not only handsome, he was molto simpatico,” Rosita says of her husband, who was commonly known as Tai. “I was married at the church of my village. We had a glass of champagne on the terrace of the factory, with the fantastic view of the mountain, smiling, and then we went to Stresa on Lago Maggiore for a formal party.”

“My father was born in Dalmatia, so we would go back every summer for 40 years, especially to one little island, San Clemente, that had no water or electricity,” says Angela, above, top, with her mother in 1968, and above with her father and brothers in 1966. (Vittorio, above right, died in a plane crash, in 2013.) “Everything was joyful, and we learned how to swim there. My mom is a great fisherman—she fished in the water and out of the water—and my brother Vittorio was an amazing fisherman all his life, thanks to my mom, not my dad. My father loved the sea, loved the sun, loved to read, loved to be quiet, but he was not a fisherman.”

“It’s important to understand that my brothers and I were not born with a famous name—the Missoni brand was growing at the same time we were,” says Angela. The family portrait above is from 1972, five years after Missoni created a sensation in Florence when Rosita removed the models’ bras just before a presentation, unaware that the bright lights would make the knits transparent. As a consequence, she was banned from the trade show.

“My dad was always playing games, making up tournaments, tennis, Ping-Pong, running, chess, cards,” says Luca. “Starting in 1973, we would gather friends for what we called a contemporary decathlon at the house, which had biking, running, shot put, swimming, and every type of possible game you could go for.” Above, top, from left: Vittorio, Angela, Ottavio, Rosita, and Luca wear custom uniforms in 1982. Above: a game of tug-of-war in 1993.

Ottavio and Rosita, shown here during a runway show finale in 1981, designed as a couple until they turned over the business to their children in the late 1990s, though Rosita has remained a daily presence in the Missoni factory. (Ottavio died in 2013, at the age of 92.) “She has the enthusiasm of a kid,” says Luca. “She’s around to enjoy, how do you say, her vision, her way of seeing things.”

“We were brought up with a lot of freedom, a sense of non-constriction, and especially non-judgment,” says Angela (above, seated third from left), photographed for W in 2014 at her home in Brunello with Rosita; Angela’s children, Francesco, Margherita, and Teresa; her longtime partner, Bruno Ragazzi; and Francesco’s since-deceased English bulldog, Johnny. “I think that is why we all came back—we only went to work in the company after my father pushed us to try other things first.”

Angela’s villa in Brunello, near the company’s factory in Sumirago, was built in 1965, with gardens designed in the 1970s by the Italian landscape architect Pietro Porcinai, and has been a gathering place for the Missonis for the past decade. “Even when we’re not at home, I try to find places that could look like something from home,” Angela says. “And every single thing on the menu has to be like food that we would eat at home. If I were to have another job, it would be throwing parties.”

“I was born on the 26th of December, which is a difficult day to celebrate,” says Angela (above, blowing out a candle at a Milan Fashion Week party in 2009). “Something I finally realized was that if I invited people on the night of the 25th, everybody had already done all the Christmas things on the 24th and the 25th for lunch, so they needed something to do. I called it the Night of the Rescue. Everybody would come to my house, and then at midnight, I could toast my birthday, and everyone could leave on the 26th for their vacations.”

“My father had a very strong personality, but in the end, what keeps us together is our women. If there’s a link between us, it’s that the passion for fashion passes through the women,” says Angela, here with her daughter Margherita (left) and Rosita. “Luca is a real artist, and Vittorio had a passion for motors and fishing. Even my father was making jokes about fashion all the time. But really, women have been the voice of this family. We all have a common sensibility, a common curiosity.”

To bring attention to the Global Climate Strike in 2019, Angela and the Missoni models walked in the finale of her spring 2020 show carrying solar-powered lamps designed by Olafur Eliasson for Little Sun, a nonprofit organization that delivers clean energy sources to rural communities in Africa. “I called him up and said, ‘Olafur, do you have 1,200 lamps available?’ And he said, ‘Let me see.’ Then he shipped them to us in Milano the next day,” Angela recalls.

Angela ended her fall 2017 show with a statement in honor of the Women’s March. “It was one of those things you do by instinct. I had to prepare one thousand pink berets in two or three weeks, and that’s not the easiest thing to do, even if you are a knitting company. But I knew that everybody at that show was on the same wavelength, and that we could have a place where we could come together. We had no fear.”

In 2018, Angela’s son, Francesco Maccapani Missoni, published The Missoni Family Cookbook (above, and top, a spread from the book showing the family having a picnic in the Swiss Alps). “He had gone to live in New York and said we had to do a cookbook because he couldn’t eat as well anywhere else but at home,” Angela says. “This has nothing to do with the Missoni fashion world, but is an intimate part of the family. He wanted to leave a testament of how important food is to us, and you also feel how much he appreciated the whole family.”

With a tradition of opening their homes to relatives, friends, and colleagues, “which are the same thing, in a way,” says Luca, the Missonis are the literal definition of a close-knit clan. “I tried to do the best for my nephews,” adds Angela. “Their father passed away dramatically, so it was very important for them to have the family. It’s been important to me, also, because while taking care of them, I had something like a purpose to go on.” From left: Michelangelo, Margherita, Angela, Francesco, Rosita, Marco, Luca, Teresa, Ottavio, and Giacomo.