MILAN, Italy (CNN) -- When Rosita and Ottavio Missoni established a small basement fashion studio in the town of Sumirago near Milan in 1953, they had just a pair of knitting machines to their name.

The colorful striped patterns that characterized their early creations were less a stylistic judgment than a reflection on the limitations of their equipment.

These days however those same rainbow stripes and knitted zigzags are the signature of one of Italian fashion's royal families.

The modest business has become a luxury empire and a close-knit family-run company that has retained a distinctive and independent identity.

Rosita and Ottavio initially focused on sportswear -- they had met in 1948 when Ottavio was competing for the Italian national team at the Olympics in London.

But when an Italian department store asked them to make dresses, they graduated from making clothes for the running track to designing fashions for the catwalk.

In 1968 legendary American Vogue editor Diana Vreeland championed Missoni's designs, helping the company find an international market that pushed it to the forefront of 70s fashion.

"The 70s were our years," Rosita told CNN. "I think the good thing we did was to keep our business in our hands. Of course we had to grow and expand but not in a huge industrial way. We kept it crafty because when you work with fashion you have to be very flexible. From the moment you produce big quantities you get tied up with the commercial side of it."

Rosita, now 73, still designs Missoni's homewares collection, but it is children Angela, Luca and Vittorio who now oversee the fashion side of the business.

Vittorio, the eldest at 51, says the second generation of Missonis was always destined to take over the running of the company from their parents.

"I would say my family and my business have always been one thing," Vittorio said.

"Since we were kids, business was part of the family. We'd hear our parents talk about business. We used to do our homework at the company and we used to play there with fabrics, papers, scissors and needles. It has always been part of our life."

Vittorio handles the commercial side of the business, marketing and selling Missoni's designs to store buyers, leaving Angela and Luca in charge of the creative side of the operation.

As the designer of Missoni's women's collection, Angela is credited with helping the label find a younger audience while retaining its distinctive patterns and fabrics.

"When I started eight years ago I felt like I was cleaning, redefining the collection and giving Missoni all its identity in a different field," she said.

"Whether it was stripes, checks or zigzags, every pattern would be in the spirit of Missoni but I started to bring them out one at a time, giving it a cleaner image.

"For certain collections I was putting little piece of color and adding a lot of solid to kind of mute the graphics and patterns."

For the younger generation, Missoni's international reach means work is now often far from Italy. Markets in China and the Middle East are now just as important as those at home and in Europe.

But Vittorio says Missoni's heritage as a traditional Italian family business is as important to the brand as the quality of the designs and fabrics. Family bonds have kept the heart of Missoni in Sumirago, where it has always been.

"When somebody buys Missoni, they know they are buying a little story," said Vittorio.

"It's not just a nice color, a fashionable item, it's something that has history and tradition and will not be fashionable today and out tomorrow. You are buying something that is going to last for a long time."