'I need to prove myself as a person'

Margherita Missoni is going against her family grain to pursue a career as an actress.

Margherita Missoni seems conscious that her life often appears to be ridiculously perfect. When asked where she's based these days, Margherita, the face of the Italian brand, throws her hands in the air. "In Rome, Paris, New York... wherever!"

The list seems impossibly glamorous, but her faux nonchalance and daytime-soap-quality gestures are charmingly self-mocking.

But then we would expect nothing less from the daughter of a fashion dynasty who wants to portray herself as a struggling actress.

"I moved to Rome because I was rehearsing a play there, really enjoyed it and decided just to stay. After New York, it was just the opposite," says Missoni, who had been studying drama at the Lee Strasberg School in New York until recently, and this weekend was in Dubai for the launch of the Marina Walk Boutique 1 store, which has a large Missoni selection. "I'm living the moment," she says, her voice deepening to a bellow. "What's next — who cares?"

With that devil-may-care attitude (that only someone of her background can afford to have), lustrous long hair that she fiddles with constantly, approachable, doll-like beauty and an ability to pull off pretty much any item of clothing, it's surprising she's as likeable as she is.

It's certainly got something to do with the fact she's not afraid to speak her mind, especially about how she's going against the plans everybody had for her.

Her mother Angela is the woman who took Missoni, the family business based on a famous knit, and turned it back into a fashion success story. (Grandmother Rosita had founded the company.)

With Margherita as the face and brand ambassador (which means she shows up to parties wearing the label and looking pretty), the brand has been sales jump massively in the last few years.

She's OK with all that, for now, as long as she has time for her passion: acting. For example, that play she's been rehearsing in Rome.

Destined from birth

"It was a contemporary Italian play, set in a garbage dump," she explains. "These people, for different reasons, end up living there and become a kind of family. I'm there because my boyfriend is there, but I don't really want to be there, and I tell them all about the rest of the world."

That role is the complete reverse of Margherita's day job, where she brings the Missoni brand to the rest of the world. It's a role she seemed destined for from birth.

"I never expected it. Everybody else expected," she says. "When I was 18, [fashion journalist] Suzy Menkes wrote an article about me and I was studying philosophy. She wrote, 'she's studying philosophy... what a great loss for fashion'."

"My family never pushed me but this is not my ambition, it's fun, it's good, and it sustains me. It helps me to feel good about the other things that I'm doing, to feel clean about acting and not feel guilty about doing something that I enjoy."

Unprompted, Margherita continues. Like any other 25-year-old, she's determined to make her own way, on her own terms.

"For example, they always expected me to go into the design side. I'm not going to even answer that question any more. Would I put all the effort into the acting if I really thought in 10 years I'd give it up? Would I audition every week, getting doors slammed in my face? I don't plan. I'm lucky that I can try out some things."

It's an admirable attitude in someone who so easily could have followed in the family footsteps and be seen as a party girl riding on the Missoni success.

"When my family would ask me what I want to do when I grow up, I'd say 'Nothing. Marry and have kids'. That was the really revolutionary thing. If I took over the company, I'd be the fifth generation of woman doing that. So what's to prove? I don't need to prove myself as a woman. I need to prove myself as a person."

On the store

The new Boutique 1 store, which officially opened last Thursday with a bash graced by Margherita Missoni and Jamie Cullam, is a lifestyle concept, selling everything from evening gowns to bikinis to coffeetable books — and the coffeetable to put it on.

It's also got some exciting exclusives, like the revived Halston line and Elie Sa'ab. In bagland, there's a hot display of exclusive Mulberry pieces — "they should look like candy," says the store's buyer, Nicole Robertson. Accessories fanatics will love the choice from Azzedine Alaia, Brian Atwood and Rupert Sanderson.

To celebrate the occasion, the store created its own fragrance — B1 — with perfumier Ormonde Jayne, whose other scents are also carried exclusively.

The girl's got style in her blood

Many of us would dream of a job which takes us around the world to model Missoni clothes. But Margherita's not 100 per cent loyal to her mother's clothes. What does she like to wear?

"Everything! I'm supporting the fashion industry," she laughs. "[Yves] Saint Laurent for clothes and accessories, Alaia accessories, Proenza Schouler, Balmain, Lanvin."

And the single gold safety pin earring? "Genevieve Jones, for a little bit of punk in me."