Ottavio Missoni is a man whose entire creative life has been inspired by the possibilities of colour.

When the Italian team marched proudly into the stadium in London for the first post-war Olympic Games of the modern era, twenty-seven year old Ottavio Missoni was there with them. Not only was he there as a competitor in the finals of the 400 metres hurdles, but his fellow national team members were all wearing wool track suits which Ottavio himself had designed with the help of a close friend Giorgio Oberweger.This was the first public showing of a Missoni creation, a track suit called Venjulia, designed by the young Italian athletic champion because he could find nothing on the market to suit his needs.

"There were no fashion press people there to applaud or criticise the creation," remembers Ottavio today of his uncommon designing origins. "But it was the beginning, the first time my work had such exposure."

The son of a sea-faring captain and a Dalmatian countess, Ottavio Missoni - known to his family and close friends as Tai, had studied fabrics at Zara, Trieste and Milan in his teenage years, and by his early twenties had established a small business with his friend Giorgio making tracksuits for local athletes. Yet it was only after a chance meeting with his future bride Rosita, a student studying in Hampstead at the time that the Missoni name began to win the critical acclaim that twenty years later would lead American Vogue to list it as one of the top ten 'big guns' of European fashion.