Angela Missoni resigns after 24 years as creative director of eponymous Milan fashion house

MILAN — Angela Missoni is leaving the role of creative director after 24 years at the Missoni fashion house founded by her parents, Ottavio and Rosita. Missoni, 62, announced the move in an interview with Business of Fashion published on Tuesday, indicating that the naming of a new CEO during the pandemic and the role of a private investment fund in backing the fashion house had given her “the confidence” to make the move. Design director Alberto Caliri, who has worked alongside Missoni for 15 years, will take over the creative role for an interim. His first collection will be presented in September, for spring 2022. “My parents invented a new language in fashion,” Missoni told the publication. “And I think over the past 25 years I’ve been able to extend the lexicon of this language.” Missoni will stay on as president of the family-run fashion house, while other family members retain roles in the company, including her mother, who is in charge of the Missoni home collection. The Missoni family maintains majority control of the house, after selling a 41.2 percent stake to the Italian investment fund FSI in 2018. Other recent changes include suspending the secondary line M Missoni in March. It was being run by Angela Missoni’s daughter, Margherita Maccapani Missoni, who stepped aside, while its future is being decided. CEO Livio Proli told Women’s Wear Daily that the family backs his five-year plan to restructure the company after the impact of COVID-19. Missoni reported a net loss in 2020, with a 33 percent decline in revenues from 110 million euros ($134 million) in 2019. “Angela is showing sensibility and courage as well as foresight with this decision, which will contribute to kick-start the third cycle of the company with a new injection of energy and creative strength,” Proli said. “She will accompany the evolution of the brand, but she realized she would have conditioned the company in staying on” as creative director. One goal is to reach more younger customers, expanding from the brand’s “extremely loyal customer base of over-40s,” he said. Proli said the nearly 70-year-old brand needs to be “dusted off and made more relevant and cool. We want to offer elements of surprise in a more modern language while not betraying Missoni’s roots.”