Rosita Missoni, co-founder of the Italian brand, Passes away at 93

Rosita Missoni, co-founder of the denominative Italian Knitwear Label Missoni, died at the age of 93.

The shocking news was confirmed by the president of Italy’s Lombardy region, Attilio Fontana, who praised the brand’s iconic "multicolored textures”.

He expressed her death as “a great loss for Italy, Lombardy and for the province of Varese where she was born and lived”.

Rosita founded the famous luxury brand- which became well known for its zig-zag motif in the northern Italian region with her husband Ottavio in 1953.

Rosita, born in 1931 in the town of Golasecca, Lombardy, was the daughter of shawlmakers.

During a study trip to London to learn English, she met Ottavio, known as Tai, while he was competing in the 400m hurdles at the 1948 Olympic Games.

At that time, Tai was creating his own knit tracksuits, which featured zippered bottoms that could be easily worn over trainers.

"When I got married, four sewing machines arrived with my husband," Rosita told the AFP news agency in a 2016 interview.

The pair, who married in 1953, started setting up a machine-knitwear workshop in Gallarate, northwest of Milan.

Their big break arrived in 1958 when a Milanese department store ordered hundreds of striped dresses bearing the Missoni label.

Missoni's first catwalk show took place in 1966, followed by a presentation at the Pitti Palace in Florence the next year.

A controversy erupted when models were asked to remove their white bras, which were visible under the blouses, pushing the brand into international fame.

Tai passed away in 2013 at the age of 92.

In the late 1990s, the couple's daughter, Angela, took over the fashion house, while Rosita continued to oversee the brand's home line, Missoni Home.