"After sixty years, there is nothing new for Missoni," Angela
Missoni noted after her show. "Even at the beginning, my father
was always mixing fibers to create a special yarn." But that
doesn't mean the house isn't always looking for—and
finding—inspiration by researching alternatives to the time-
honored Missoni traditions. Here, for instance, the use of
knitting looms, rather than knitting machines, had allowed the
opportunity to create unique fabrics, like the rubber-coated
yarn made with outerwear expert Hancock of Scotland. Missoni
inserted panels of it into waterproof coats.  The house was
stretching in other ways, too. This most Italian of labels
looked to West Africa for the colors of its new collection:
indigo-dyed blues from Benin, sand and earth tones from Mali,
rain-forest greens from the Ivory Coast. The models crunched
down a bamboo catwalk. Bamboo also patterned a nylon blouson and
shorts. Knits were embroidered with shells, and there was a
tribal echo in a shade of mud red that accented the co