Shopping bag.

“I left New York and went to Paris and then Rome. From Rome I decided I wanted to work with Missoni so went back to Milan… I always loved acting, it was my favourite thing to do, to play and be other people. I really enjoyed it and it was part of the process of understanding who I am. There came a point though that I had to live my own life, you know? I loved my life and actually being in it, and I didn’t want to ‘get away’ into other things.”

To hear Margherita talk of this time in her life with such conviction immediately removes any suggestion of mere youthful flights of fancy. Rather it comes across as a successful reimagining of just who the ‘Missoni woman’ should and could be. Refusing to be defined by her beauty alone – at the age of just twenty Harper’s Bazaar declared her to be one of the world’s most beautiful women – she made her role as the ‘face’ of Missoni completely her own, no matter where she was in the world or what she was doing. It helped of course though that she was a Missoni and didn’t just wear the items: the vibrant, colourful zig-zag patterns that made the house’s name were ingrained in her very being. Proof of this, if ever that was needed, can be found in the bathroom of her home. There hangs a 1980s Missoni campaign poster featuring the entire Missoni family. “It happened very naturally of course,” says Margherita. “It was not a brand I had to adapt to, or wonder about what it was they wanted from me. The way they raised me to act reflected the same values as the brand so there wasn’t much of an issue there!”

There was a certain serendipity at play also in the fact that Margherita’s burgeoning status coincided with her mother Angela’s conscious effort to bring Missoni to a younger audience. “Seeing it on me helped her perceive how the brand could be younger,” Margherita says. Margherita acknowledges that there have been periods in the brand’s history in which Missoni “had gotten really old.” She can however pinpoint the exact moment that she realised her mother’s efforts to re-energise the brand were beginning to pay off: “I really remember the moment when my friends started asking me for discounts! So now there is a new moment of coolness…”

After her return to Italy from New York and elsewhere, Margherita embraced an altogether more formal role at Missoni, joining the accessories design team and overseeing licensed Missoni ranges from swimwear to shoes. Ultimately though Margherita has chosen to step away completely from her professional links to Missoni, and you get the sense that this was precisely due to the strong sense of family that tied her to the brand in the first place.