Italian knitwear label co-founder Rosetta Missoni has died.

Rosetta Missoni, co-founder of Italian knitwear label Missoni, has died at the age of 93.

The news was confirmed by Attilio Fontana, president of Italy’s Lombardy region, who praised the brand’s famous “multi-colored texture”.

They described her death as “a great loss for Italy, Lombardy and the province of Varese where she was born and lived”.

Rosetta founded the luxury brand in the northern Italian region with her husband Ottavio in 1953 – famous for its zigzag motif.

Rosita, whose parents were shawl makers, was born in 1931 in the town of Golasica, Lombardy.

During a study tour to London to learn English, she met Ottavio – known as Tai – while competing in the 400m hurdles at the 1948 Olympic Games.

At the time, Tai was creating custom tracksuits, which included zippered bottoms so they could be attached to overtrainers.

“When I got married, my husband came with four sewing machines,” Rosita told AFP in a 2016 interview.

The couple, who married in 1953, initially set up a machine-made clothing workshop in Galeretto, northwest of Milan.

Her big break came in 1958 when the Milanese department store ordered hundreds of Missoni-labeled striped dresses.

Missoni’s first catwalk show came in 1966, followed by a presentation at the Pitti Palace in Florence the following year.

A controversy over the visibility of the dress, when models were asked to remove their white bras because they could be seen under the blouse, catapulted the brand to global fame.

Tai died in 2013 at the age of 92.

The couple’s daughter, Angela, took over the fashion house in the late 1990s, although Rosita continued to work on the label’s home line, Missoni Home.