ROME, May 9 (RIA Novosti) – Ottavio Missoni, founder of the famous Italian fashion house Missoni, has died at home at the age of 92, Italian media reports, citing his family.
Ottavio Missoni was born on February 11, 1921 and spent his youth training as an athlete. He fought at the battle of El Alamein in the Second World War, and was taken prisoner by British forces in 1942, Vogue reported. In 1948 he took part in the Olympic Games in London, taking 6th place in the 400 meter hurdles.
In 1953 he married Rosita Jelmini, whose family owned a textile factory in Varese, in the north of Italy. It was this union that brought about the creation of the fashion house Missoni.
Missoni shot to fame in the 1960s with its radical reinvention of ready-to-wear knits and trademark jagged-line pattern.The first Missoni boutique opened in 1976, the same year that Ottavio Missoni was named one of the 10 most elegant men in the world, Vogue reported.
In 1983 Missoni designed costumes for the opera Lucia di Lammermoor, which premiered at Milan’s La Scala.
Earlier this year Vittorio Missoni, the company’s CEO and Ottavio’s eldest child, was declared missing after a private plane he was travelling in vanished off the coast of Venezuela shortly after take-off on January 4.
Search efforts found no trace of the plane, although international media reported that luggage belonging to Vittorio Missoni was washed up on a Caribbean island a month later.
