March 2010

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‘Workshop Missoni: Daring to be Different’ opens today at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, London (until 20 September). The show is curated by Luca Missoni – son of Rosita and Ottavio ‘Tai’ Missoni (above), the founders of the family-run Italian fashion label.

On the press tour Luca Missoni points to an example of vintage costume on display telling us, ‘We have a, er, big archive’. This is met with a polite ripple of laughter as clearly it is something of an understatement when describing the fruits of his parents’ 55-year marriage and business partnership.

As well as maintaining an archive of their own lines of brightly coloured and patterned knitted clothing, the Missoni’s buy and commission contemporary design and collect European Modernist art, Italian Futurism in particular. Watercolours by Sonia Delauney that normally hang on Rosita’s bedroom walls are in the show as well as a rare and rather amazing Futurist suit by Giacomo Balla and an oil painting by Gino Severini.

It makes perfect sense that the originators of knitted textiles that zigzag with colour and shape should be attracted to the Futurists with their obsessions of speed, sound and dynamism. Luca Missoni describes the company’s fabric designs as, ‘Jazzy… like a jam-session of colours’ and that colour and movement are part of his parents’ ‘DNA’.

Other exhibits include a contemporary video of a New York dance company performing in 70s Missoni clothing, a sound installation of music created from the noise made by the factory’s looms and machinery and colour storyboards and designs from the workshop. Most touching are the scrap-book style family-album collages of Tai and Rosita’s parents and grandparents hung alongside Tai’s athletics certificate for representing his country in the 1948 Olympics. It was at these games in London that he met his future wife.

Fashion, technology, art, design and la famiglia all figure in this compact but packed exhibition of colour. A Missoni umbrella is among the merchandise in the gift shop ‘to brighten up those rainy days’ or so the press release says. Ironically, a normally grey London is currently enjoying that Mediterranean weather that this family of Italians appears to have brought with them.

'Workshop Missoni: Daring to be Different' is at the Estorick Collection, London, until 20 September.
www.estorickcollection.com