Margherita Missoni: Let’s start with a few questions about the lockdown. Has it changed your daily routine?

Angela Missoni: I think this is the first time I’ve stayed at home for so long; two months in a row at home. Of course, I started using the time to fix things in the house, to put things in order, to go through pictures and boxes and stuff. There is still a lot around. I think I need another quarantine to get it all done!

Margherita: Is that a relief or do you feel uneasy living in a more organized environment?

Angela: No, no, no, I love it when things are tidy and organized. I hate it when it is untidy. You can see the difference in the various areas of my house, right? You can see the kitchen, which is always very organized. I can get maniacal about organization, too.

Margherita: You are very organized, but I think because you are very busy, you leave things behind, and you don’t throw things away.

Angela: Because everything has a meaning, and everything can be useful for something else, either an idea or something practical. I don’t throw away any ribbon, for example. I have boxes of ribbons. I have ribbons spilling out of drawers.

Margherita: Are there any good practices from this time that you think you might continue?

Angela: I hope so, but I have no idea. I am always curious about tomorrow, and in these times I try not to make plans. I am doing a lot of gardening every day.
The experience of witnessing, for the first time, the differences in the garden every single day, every single moment of spring, that was exceptional and very inspiring, and something I would like to keep in my life. But, at the same time, I’m not sure I will be able do it. Having a garden in this moment is an amazing privilege.

Margherita: Has any of this had a positive impact on your creative practice?

Angela: You need to be creative in life. I don’t just mean imagining a dress or fabrics or a style. You need to be creative and to use your creativity. So, during these two months, I have had to put my creativity into many different fields, such as the organization of the company. This has pushed my creativity, because when you are stuck here, all you can do is let your mind and your imagination fly outside the house.

Margherita: In terms of your post-lockdown work, will you be keener to explore notions of fantasy and escapism, or more inclined towards documenting the moment and realism?

Angela: There is a duality in my job, as you know. I have a creative job, a job of creative direction, and that always takes a bit of escapism. But then the other side is that I am the president, where I need to use reality and try to be creative in imagining the reality of tomorrow and how to adapt to a new way of working and thinking. As a company, we have used this time in a very creative way. We have made some very important moves for the future. We haven’t just been staying in and waiting for what is going to happen tomorrow; we have been using this time to organize and to imagine our future.

Margherita: Have you thought about the shows and how you will present your work this time around, and in the future, too?

Angela: Of course, of course, but this is not a process that only just started. I have been thinking about what the future of shows and fashion weeks could be for many years. What is the meaning of the show today? There are many different aspects of the shows. We are still exposed a lot – a good 60 to 65% – to wholesale, so we need to present the collection to the buyers. But the shows today have become like a big event for a company, rather than the final customer, right? So something needs to rewind; something needs to be understood. How do you present to your buyers? How do you present your collection and at what kinds of events? How do you present to the final customer? This is a big discussion, and something that is on my mind. We were already thinking about how to present the collections in a digital way anyway, and about what it means to present using all the content that you have to produce for digital media, social media, and so on. I don’t think that the right thing now would be to replicate a real fashion show, which is a concept that started at the beginning of the last century and is really coming to an end now. It doesn’t make sense to me. A fashion show still means something if there is a public, if there is common excitement, and you present
something; it is like going to a concert where something magical can happen. If it is a good show, there is a magic that happens in those 15 or 20 minutes that builds the image of the company and helps creates an emotion for it. A digital experience cannot exactly replicate that, because the digital experience is something that you have on your own.

Margherita: Who are the shows for? I guess that when you decide who they are for, then you can decide on the show.

Angela: It is more of a presentation, not even a show. This is very different from what the conglomerates, the big names do; that is pure communication and nothing more. For us, it is still a way of selling fashion to buyers.

Margherita: One of the most positive things to have happened during the lockdown has been a sort of heightened sense of community, people getting together and holding each other up. Do you think that something will come of this in the Italian fashion community? Will Italians get together at this point? There is that famous photo from the 1980s of all the Italian designers…

Angela: Yes, but your grandma is missing from that picture!

Margherita: I noticed! Are you experiencing some sort of Italian pride? Is Italian fashion getting together to give mutual support?

Angela: Not yet, but I do think the [fashion trade body] Camera della Moda is working. It’s keeping us up to date, and at the moment it is very busy dealing with our government.

Margherita: Has the Italian government helped fashion in the past, and has that changed now?

Angela: I honestly think, and this over a long period of time, because I was already listening in as a teenager, that fashion in Italy has never really been supported. Perhaps a little more in the past five or six years, but, honestly, we do need more; we need the full understanding.

Margherita: ‘Made in Italy’ is a trademark, and not only for fashion. An interesting development over the last 20 years, is the organic food [label], which is now recognized by everyone, and has changed people’s mindsets about the difference between good and bad food. Do you think Italian craftsmanship, or craftsmanship in general, could go through a similar process, and change collective beliefs?

Angela: I do, because I think people are going to start appreciating craftsmanship more and more. They will better understand Italian craftsmanship, as well as all the special and unique skills we have here. People are going to be paying more attention to the quality of the craftsmanship, which is going to become much, much more important.

Margherita: If fashion brands are able to get together and find a common way to communicate that, then something similar could happen in fashion. Over
the past years, all of us have been living lives less related to the places where we are from or where we have lived; we have become citizens of the world, and
everything became a bit more homogenized. Now things will probably change because travelling will be harder, so we will be more geographically located in a specific place. Maybe characteristics from specific places will stand out more. Do you think this is a chance for Italian fashion to really push its Italian-ness, not just from the production standpoint, but also in terms of style? Back in the day, it was easier to recognize an Italian label than it is now.

Angela: Italy has a unique place in the world. It is a country that can really trade on the desire to be here, the desire to have a souvenir of Italy. Something Italian is something special. It has always been like that, and it will always be like that. You know, Italian quality is what you find in high-end fashion products. Most of them are produced in Italy, although maybe you don’t recognize the Italian quality, because they have a French label. Italian quality is made up of a lot of small-scale artisans. We have the potential to push our product, so let’s hope that we can all recover easily and quickly from this lockdown, which has put a lot of companies in big trouble, in all fields and at every level.

Margherita: Let’s move away from the lockdown to some questions about the past. From a young age, you always strived to be different, to look different as an individual, although you were also very shy. How did you solve that contradiction and make it work? What were the influences that made you, on the one hand, very shy and on the other, kind of eccentric?

Angela: I was shy, I think, because I realized at an early age that I was surrounded by very special people, starting with my parents and their friends. I always felt that they were so bright and intelligent that I had to just listen. I have always been very curious, though. Not communicating and not expressing myself was not because I didn’t have anything to say – it was because I was very busy listening. I started to express myself much later, really, even if I had always felt free to express myself. I wasn’t pushed to be quiet; I was just allowed to be. I had a lot of freedom of expression, even in the expression of being quiet, and my parents had a lot of respect for individuality.

Margherita: How did you create your own individuality, in the end, within the tightness of our family?

Angela: I think I was born with broad shoulders; I never felt that the Missoni company… I felt I was part of something very special, and that my parents were doing special things that were different from what the parents of the other pupils at school did, with their vision of life. I was shy in school about saying too much of what was happening in my house, of what I was witnessing, because I knew my friends and my teachers wouldn’t understand. I only ever had one girl friend; I never had a lot of friends, a big community, like you. I kept all my thoughts to myself, because I always felt I couldn’t be understood. I didn’t have a problem with this though, that’s the point I’m trying to make. It wasn’t a problem for me not to be understood, because I knew there was something special over there. It’s been a
journey and an experience, but one very important thing that made me open up and express myself was maternity. From when I was very young, I always had this
feeling that I had to have children, and in fact, I had them young for my generation. As I always say, from that moment, all of a sudden you have this enormous love that you can’t retain; the love you have for your baby. Suddenly I was more open to the world, more understanding of it, and this helped my character. It really changed my character, and I started to become more confident in myself. I was working in the company just to get some pocket money, and then I was in and out with every child. When I was pregnant with Teresa, I went to my dad and I think that was the only day I was ever depressed in my life. Perhaps things weren’t going in the direction I wanted. I felt that there was something wrong in my life, and I went to your grandpa and said, ‘I’ve realized I am never going to work in this company again.’ He asked why, so I said, ‘Because I think I want to do this and that, design jewels and do children’s clothes.’ And then he told me, ‘You know, if you have ideas, you can do things in this company on your own. You don’t need to work with your mother every single day.’ He understood that my mother had a very
strong character and I needed to stand on my own two feet; I needed to find my confidence. At that moment, I started following the licensing. That was the point when I realized that I was capable. After three years I realized that I knew how to express all the aspects of Missoni in products. But then I realized I really wanted to do fashion. Missoni, the original label, was becoming a classic, and it was not what I wanted for myself. I started thinking I wanted to design fashion and express myself in that. So, with the permission of the family, I asked to do my own line, knitwear, and I started to develop a solid silhouette, relief and textures, and to experiment with yarns. I could see that my mother was really impressed by the fact that I could follow all the processes, all together, and after the show for the fourth or the fifth collection, she came and asked if I would think about doing the main line. She said what I was doing was what she thought Missoni should have been, and that fashion is what you do when you are young and still passionate and strong, so that you can fight for your ideas with the commercial side of the business. I accepted, and I took over. Not straight away; I just started to give my opinion and to work on the direction of the show and the collection, to pull out what I thought was the essence of Missoni. I have always been very curious to meet people who know more than me. I know there are many people who know much more than me and I have always been very curious about learning these different processes.

Margherita: What are you most proud of? What change are you most proud of in the company since you took over in 1997? Both creatively and structurally.

Angela: Oh my God. The first thing was that I immediately saw that I had given my mother a second life creatively, and this was a really big source of pride for
me. I have always been very thankful for what I received from my family, and besides the fact that I had a lot of fun and it was very interesting and very special, I always had the feeling that I had to take care in what I did, because it was my duty to fix things in the company, too. But the fact that I gave her a second creative life – I was really very proud of that. For the rest, I think that the company deserved that attention. Structurally, the company has changed many, many times over the last 25 years – sometimes very slowly – but I am very happy that we have kept the family together, and the third generation can enter. And, of course, we managed to find a financial partner like FSI, which I am very proud of. I arrived at a point where I was looking forward, because I’ve always felt that being the second
generation, I had to leave this project to the third generation. I had to leave it with some legs to walk on, not as a burden. I am very proud that I gave this project the legs to keep it going for many years to come. Creatively, I am proud that I kept the Missoni language, but have made it modern. I always said my parents invented the Missoni language and I was able to introduce new words, like a new lexicon into that language. And keeping that language modern: yes, I am proud of that.

Margherita: Which person working in the fashion industry do you most admire and why?

Angela: There are so many people, on so many levels, but… my mother. I’ll go back to my mother, yes.

Margherita: And looking at past legends, whose work do you wish you had created?

Angela: Coco Chanel’s.

Margherita: When you work creatively, can you give an example of what is most intuitive for you in your work and what you overthink?

Angela: I always work very intuitively; I go from one thing to the next.

Margherita: For me, doing colours would be a very intuitive thing, but then I would probably overthink fabric weights, and all of that.

Angela: But this will come with experience; it will become more immediate once you have more experience.

Margherita: Do you require a deadline
to achieve your best results?

Angela: Yes. I have always said that deadlines are very important because you have to concentrate.

Margherita: Do you find it worrying to be without the distractions of deadlines and schedules?

Angela: No. At the end of the day, I am very realistic, so if I can’t do something, I adapt. The disruption just pushed everything back a month or a month and a
half, so I adapted. There is nothing you can do, so you work on the problems you can solve in the moment, and think for a bit longer about the other ones. Everything I could do, we did. We have to move a deadline? We move the deadline. That is what it is going to be. It’s not in my character to panic. I don’t panic easily. I am lucky; I am very grounded.

Margherita: And do you still wake up with ideas at 4am and start writing e-mails?

Angela: It depends! There are moments in which, yes, sometimes I am behind in answering e-mails and maybe I do wake up at night. But I’ve never really
suffered from insomnia, though I have had moments where I have slept less. Recently, I do sleep better. I don’t wake up at night.

Margherita: And how do you deal with criticism? Have you got better at coping with this over time?

Angela: Yes, for sure. But I think I had a good background in that, because I was used to reading the reviews for my parents’ collections, and listening to things. I’m used to seeing and being accustomed to criticism for the collections, so I know that criticism can happen. I know that this is a very difficult job, selling clothes and selling fashion. Every season, you have a challenge. The label is alive and has made an impact on fashion trends several times through its 67 years of existence. There have been many criticisms in our history, but we managed to get over them, so we should embrace the criticisms and try to do better next time. Anyway, after every show, my reaction is to say, ‘OK, that’s done, let’s work on the next one.’ I always try to look to the future.