Missoni on a mission

By Carole Sloan -- Home Textiles Today, 11/13/2000 12:00:00 AM

NEW YORK-Having passed the torch of the Missoni apparel collections to daughter Angela, Rosita Missoni is now totally engrossed in developing the Missoni home collection.

The collection brings together the signature space dyed yarns in unique constructions for home furnishings fabrics and manufactured products that are shown in a medley of stripes, waves, zigzags, squares, and tartans. It's what Missoni calls "the Missoni put-together game."

The new collection uses the space dyes in a variety of color statements, derived as she says from the way she uses color in her various homes. "I've always dressed my homes with my fabrics. I give a new twist or switch to the fabrics when I use them in the home," she related.

"In London, I play off warm colors because of the weather. In Sardinia, it's all sea and sand colors. I play with all shades of blue, but I can't be faithful so I break them with orange or purple. In Milan, all the colors live together."

The collection, which is new to the United States market, is designed to convey the intricacies of space dye yarns in rugs, bedding, sheets, table linens and decorative fabrics.

It brings together the Missoni cachet of "an eye on color, pattern and texture, a positive reaction to the touch," Rosita Missoni, the creative director of Missoni Home Furnishings explained.

The core of the collection is a group of solids that are not really solid colors but a monogram motif that uses a dyeing technique to create the color effect in both a percale and a sateen-and shown in 13 colors. The sheets with special finishing are 300-count cotton sateen, 200-count cotton percale, 300-count cotton jacquard and 180-count linen.

In bedding, Missoni works concentric squares of cashmere plaid in throws, or mates soft wool jacquards with terry in quilts and combines large and fine colorful stripes on towels. In rugs, the space dyed effects are exaggerated in wool and silk hand knotted designs set in macro-patchwork sections.

Throughout the collection, the fiber story is a key point, with silk, cashmere, viscose and linen mixed with the cotton core fiber story.

The home collection is housed together with the apparel in the Missoni store on Madison Avenue and 78th Street here and will be available at Saks in bedding, ABC Carpet & Home, Between the Sheets and Sue Fisher King.

All merchandise is shipped from Italy, said Wanda Jelmini, creative director for T & J Vestor, the family business run by Rosita's two brothers, and now into the fourth generation, that produces the manufactured products. Rosita and her husband Tai have used the technology of space dyeing as their signature in fabrics and apparel for decades.