It doesn't often happen to have as a father "a piece of Italy, a ledger of the wisdom of life":
Angela Missoni
knows this and is happy that her father Ottavio, who passed away in 2013, "is remembered with great affection and esteem" on the centenary of his birth, which took place on
11 February 1921
in Ragusa of Dalmatia, today Dubrovnik.
Athlete, stylist, artist,
Ottavio known as Tai
he was also mayor of the "Free Municipality of Zadar in Exile".
"Today is the day of remembrance and my father was an exile - explains Angela - he was never a revanchist, but a peacemaker, he wanted history to be known and remembered as a warning for the new generations. Today it is finally better, but c "It is still a medal for civil valor on the banner of the Municipality of Zara lying in some drawer. My father should have collected it, but there were too many political differences to do so".
He, who at 20 had left his city to go as a soldier and was taken prisoner in El Alamein, and who after 4 years of imprisonment no longer had a home to return to, "never made us weigh anything, he said. that in captivity he had been very well because he had been able to devote himself to his favorite hobbies, reading and sleeping ".
Back in Italy, Missoni had resumed training and managed to participate in the 1948 Olympics. "He always said to me - Angela recalls - 'if you have the solution why are you worried? And if you don't have it why are you worried?'".
"We were lucky - he confides - to have him for so long, he was a special man who raised us in freedom and with great support. With my mother I had more confidence, but in difficult moments I went to him. When I was expecting my third child. I told him that I no longer wanted to work in the company because I wanted to create children's clothes and he told me that the company was the umbrella under which to develop my projects ".
Among the many gifts, also the choice of growing business and family in Sumirago, in the Varese area: "at the time everyone told him that it was crazy to live in the province, that those were weekend places, but he has always been very free and independent and today we all still live here, just a few minutes away from each other ".
"Dad - continues Angela, who signs the collections of the family maison - left us this lifestyle, this way of appreciating it, thanks to my mother's complicity, because without her he would have done something else. He could not bear too much responsibility and every time new proposals arrived he would say 'Rosita, but why do you want to work more? Even if we earn more money we would not have time to spend it ".
Time was needed for art, like the one collected in the Tapestry room at the Maga museum in Gallarate, and for friends, from Bocca and Biagi to Fellini and Walter Chiari, but also those from childhood, with whom he spent the holidays.
"He even made peace with Biagi and Bocca, he was a friend of both of them and he put them at the table together, to say - the daughter continues - the thickness. And then it was crazy charm. On the street they turned to look at him and I was very proud. Sons and grandchildren were lucky enough to know him and live him, now I would like to retrieve the archive footage for the grandchildren "but who knows, maybe even for a film about this extraordinary life:" nothing is missing, my father - concludes Angela - is really the character of a film ".
It is no coincidence that his friend Fulvio Scaparro remembers him like this: "Tai has had fire in his veins all his life and with the ups and downs of every adventure he has shown that he has all the qualities that young people would like to see in adults: consistency between saying and doing, courage, physical strength, freedom of thought and speech, the ability to recover after any misfortune, curiosity, joy, sense of humor, generosity not shown for those in need, love for art and nature, cult of conviviality with true friends who are not vain and non-fanatic, love for life - concludes the psychoanalyst - in all its forms ".
(HANDLE).