PUTTING ON THE KNITS

There are some fashion labels that have nothing to do with the superficialities of supermodels, or indeed with the search for the Next Big Thing. They inhabit a world beyond the narrow, restless confines of fashion. Missoni - the Italian knitwear company founded and run by Ottavio and Rosita Missoni and their family - is just such a label.

For 42 years, the Missonis have been producing their signature stripes and patterns without a thought for the fluctuations of hemlines or the question of what is "in" or "out". Ask them who their typical customer is, and they will list not fashion editors and models, but painters, opera singers, conductors. Yehudi Menuhin once asked them to show him a new way to dress on stage; afterwards, he dedicated an album to Ottavio, "to the maestro of living". In short, to wear a Missoni tunic, scarf or jumper is not a sign of wearing the latest look; rather, it is a message that says you are a serious person with an understanding of colour, art and design. At least, that's how it has always been. But all that looks set to change, because recently Missoni has suddenly become ... well, fashionable. Fashion people everywhere have gone Missoni-crazy. The knitwear may be expensive, but a few months ago, Knightsbridge boutique A La Mode sold out of Missoni's expensive inter-season "cruise"-line in advance orders, before it had even hit the rails.

At the ready-to-wear collections in Milan last October, the Missoni show, held without any brouhaha in the Milanese equivalent of Birmingham's exhibition centre, was the highlight of the week. Only two seasons ago, the hall had been half-empty for the show; now there were hordes of journalists and buyers jostling to get in. At the end of the show, a slightly dazed, grey-haired couple walked down the catwalk hand-in-hand to delighted applause. Blinking into the lights, Ottavio (known as Tai) and Rosita Missoni, with a combined age of well over a century, smiled and waved. Not since the Seventies had they felt so much in demand, so in tune with the times.

Equally encouraging were reports that, the day before the show, the flagship store in Milan had been full of young women - many of them models - buying Missoni's simple scarves and knitted T-shirts. It was official: fashion had caught up with Missoni again.

Some of the credit for this should go to Ottavio and Rosita's 37-year- old daughter Angela, who had been fine-tuning the intricate rainbow stripes and repeated zig- zag patterns into simple, pared-down shapes, helping to make the label look exactly right for now. "I sharpened up the image," says Angela (who has a label in her own name as well). "I have tried to redefine it and bring it in line with younger taste." Like Gucci before it, Missoni has reinvented itself.

A stranger visiting the party after the Milan show might have imagined that they had stumbled into the celebrations of some strange sect. Everyone - dressers and designers, friends, family, young and old - was dressed in their favourite Missoni knits: garishly patterned "old-lady" sweaters, grandpa cardis, and the new face of the label, in the form of sleek, strappy evening dresses sparkling with thousands of sequins in cleverly graduated stripes from sea-blue to aquamarine green and golden yellow. Even the tablecloths, cushions, wall drapes and chair covers were in colours and patterns, vividly clashing as only the Missonis know how. After the party, guests were invited to take a cushion or a tablecloth away with them; many subsequently framed them.

"For years, Missoni was a good product," says 65-year-old Rosita, "with a very good clientele and fans all over the world. But it was not part of a fashion trend. Now it is back in fashion." And to the fashion cognoscenti - who have spent the 1980s and much of the 1990s in black, mourning the passing of the 1970s - Missoni's gloriously clashing explosions of colours and patterns look even fresher than they did in 1971, when Charlotte Rampling wore a fringed Missoni knit as her wedding-dress.

THE journey to Missoni's latest success began in 1948, at the London Olympic Games. Tai, then just 16, was competing in the 400m hurdles. Among his compatriots in the crowd was Rosita, who fell in love with him, made contact and arranged to meet him shortly afterwards by Eros in Piccadilly Circus. They married in 1953; their working lives began the next year, with just three knitting machines.

It took time to make their mark, but by 1971 Bernadine Morris, fashion editor of the New York Times, was writing: "It's what Chanel would be doing if she were still alive, young and working in knits." The following season, she raved: "They make the best knits in the world, some say the best clothes in the world." The press continued to laud Missoni collections until their attention was distracted by the power-dressing and any-colour- as-long-as-it's-black values of the 1980s. Somehow, Missoni's knits, with their hand-made quality and ethnic undertones, didn't quite fit the hardness of the decade. But the backbone of the business survived - famous Missoni cardigan-wearers of the period included Steven Spielberg and Robert Rauschenberg - and the business was thus in good shape to reinvent itself for the 1990s.

The spring/summer collection shortly to go on sale in Britain was inspired by sun, sea and sand. It includes slinky, fish-scale sequin dresses worthy of Versace - in stark contrast to the cosy, multi-coloured woollies of yesteryear. There are also transparent knits of silk and viscose (Missoni first shocked Florence in 1967 by sending out models wearing sheer dresses with nothing underneath) in the graduated colours of "dawn on water; sunset with purples and oranges, and the greens and blues of lagoon water". Nature is always an inspiration to Tai. He is responsible for the textile designs, which he works out on graph-paper, colouring in tiny squares one by one. These days, computers speed up the process, but, as Rosita says, "the computer cannot design anything - it merely helps translate the designs to fabric."

For the Missonis, work remains as much a hobby as a job. Their home is their workplace and there is little difference between work and play. Even their holidays - in India, Africa, Thailand, Mexico, Guatemala - are a time to gather information for future collections. But Tai still has the air of an absent-minded thinker and genial grandfather rather than a fashion guru, and he says that he enjoys food as much as he enjoys designing.

None the less, he and Rosita are back, if only for the moment, basking in the fickle glow of fashion's approval. And, for the next few seasons, at least, the creative thinkers who love to wear Missoni can enjoy the novelty of knowing that they are - like it or not - the height of fashion. !

STOCKISTS

A La Mode, 36 Hans Crescent, London SW1

Browns, South Molton Street, London W1

Joseph, 77 Fulham Road, London, SW3

Harrods, Knightsbridge, London SW1

Harvey Nichols, Knightsbridge, London SW1

Lisa Stirling, 3-4 St James House, St James Street, Manchester

Matches, 34 High Street, Wimbledon, London SW19

Fortnum & Mason, 181 Piccadilly, London W1