Rosita Missoni (designer)

Described by some as the nonna of knitwear, the matriarch of the Missoni Clan is a force to be reckoned with.

Rosita and her husband Ottavio (Tai for short) founded the company over half a century ago. Although she stepped down in 1997, she has hardly stopped! In 2004 she launched Missoni Home and in 2009 she cut the ribbon on the first Hotel Missoni in Edinburgh, since then more have opened in Kuwait, Oman, Brazil and Turkey. Her favourite smell is a kind of bush called Cestrum nocturnum, it's incense and honey mixed together, only flowering at sunset and all through the evening. Her guilty pleasures are crossword puzzles, wine and food. Her most treasured item is a coffee table painted by her granddaughters when they were twelve and ten.

But it is her love of colour that has made her a household name around the globe, "I cannot stay away from colour" - we hope she never does!