The house of the founder of the brand Missoni Rosita Missoni
For her Paris apartment on the Left Bank, Rosita Missoni chose her favorite style of the 1960s
Rosita Missoni will always have a reason to come back to Paris: exhibitions, shows, the opening of new Missoni boutiques (the latter opened at Faubourg Saint Honore in Paris in 2015).
Wherever she appears, she is always in the center of attention and surrounded by crowds of admirers - fashionable youth, mostly fans of the style of the 1960s. It is he, bright and incendiary, that sets the tone both in the fashion collections of the brand and in the interior of the Paris apartment of Rosita Missoni at the intersection of Boulevard Saint-Germain and Rue du Bac. Here the family stops whenever they come to France.
The central area is filled with fashionable and designer shops, the first Missoni boutique, which opened in the city, is located nearby. “To live in this quarter is to be in the thick of things, and this completely suits us,” the hostess comments.
From the windows there is a fascinating view of the baroque facade of the church of Saint-Thomas-d’Aquin. Apartments of 250 square meters. m on the top floor of a building of the XIX century accommodate five rooms, including a spacious living room with fireplace.
The interior contains everything that Rosita loves most of all - above all, vintage, designer textiles and art of the 20th century. Against this background, the hostess, posing for a photographer in a bright outfit with patterns in the spirit of Kandinsky and Delone, looks particularly organic.
The stories of the family and the brand of the same name are inextricably linked. With her future husband, Rosita (then not Missoni, but Gelmini), met in 1948 in London. Ottavio, a professional athlete, took part in the Olympic Games.
Being married, the couple founded an atelier in the city of Gallarate, not far from the textile factory of the grandfather and grandmother Rosita. At first, Ottavio and Rosita produced striped knitted fabrics, soon they were added with fabrics with zigzag patterns that glorified the company to the whole world.
In 1994, these fabrics were included in the Guggenheim Museum in New York as a vivid example of post-war Italian decorative art of the 20th century. In 1997, Rosita Missoni transferred the main business to children - sons Vittorio and Luka and daughter Angela (Angela Missoni), and she began to oversee the interior direction of the brand.
The best-selling fabrics of the Missoni Home collection are easily recognizable in the interiors of this Parisian apartment. Rosita Missoni always decorates her home all over the world herself, without the help of a professional decorator. So it was with the villa Missoni in Sardinia, apartments in London, Milan and Venice.
The hostess does not restrain herself in anything; therefore, in an atmosphere, sometimes there are very unusual things. “Interior design has a lot in common with Italian cuisine: you take more ingredients and mix,” says Rosita Missoni. The iconic objects like the chairs of Hans Wegner, the hostess boldly mixes with wicker vintage furniture, bought in an antique shop.
Extravagant palm-shaped gypsum floor lamps were once in an old casino in Nice. In the corridor you can see a mini-copy of the Eiffel Tower. The hostess turned the statuette found on the Marché Biron market into a designer lamp. Spangled with rhinestones, it flickers, almost like a real outside window.