DESIGNER SPOTLIGHT: ROSITA MISSONI

A chat with Rosita Missoni about interior design and the Missoni lifestyle

When her daughter, Angela, stepped up to take over the Missoni empire, the founder happily stepped away. But she quickly realized that retirement was not for her and returned to manage the Missoni Home collection. This was in 1997. Seventeen years later, she is over eighty years old and still running Missoni Home.

She emphasizes that Missoni is not just a brand, it’s a lifestyle, and the Home collection represents Rosita’s natural lifestyle – the central catalyst behind the collection. With the Home collection, Rosita found a new challenge that she describes as a game that she “could play for forever.” Patterns that can be renewed yearly, as in fashion, but with a much more timeless quality. The exploration of comfort, pleasure and sensation was also essential for the Home collection – a slight departure from the world of fashion.

This year, the Top 4 sofa was launched at Milan Design Week. It is a modular sofa that is easy to put together and comes with easily removable covers that can be removed and replaced as desired. The black and white provides a perfect background for color in the Missoni space-dyed texture.

Rosita’s top interior design tip? Experiment! She says, “Play with fabrics. Dress an old chair or an old sofa with a new fabric. Sometimes just a throw is enough to lift a corner.”