Margherita Missoni's diary

I'm in London for the summer party season. I made it to the Serpentine last week for the first time, which was great fun but the weather was so bad that my extremely summery dress was a little out of place. It's hard to readapt to cold weather at this time of the year, especially when it's bright blue skies every day back in Italy. To keep warm we drank lavender martinis and danced to Alexa Chung's Britpop and 1960s set. By the end of the evening my white shoes were a Glastonbury shade of brown from the mud, so I'll have to take them to the Missoni factory to get them cleaned up.

My mother Angela joined me for the opening of our new flagship store on New Bond Street. The store is very cute but it's not huge and there were so many people, including the beautiful actress Rebecca Hall and the artist Dinos Chapman, spilling out on to the street. It felt like more like a summer street party than an opening. It was a great success and all the special-edition bags, made from vintage Missoni fabric, sold out, with proceeds going to Bella Freud's Hoping Foundation. I also caught up with my friends Yasmin Le Bon and Mario Testino. I've known Mario since I was 12; he's a bit like an uncle to me. We hit it off when he was working with my mother in the 1990s after she had taken over the campaigns from my grandmother. My mother would say, 'Mario, you do understand that she's 12 and you should be friends with me, not my daughter.' We share a very similar sense of humour.

The party moved on for dinner at 5 Pollen Street, around the corner from the store, but I had to sneak off early because I had a 7am pick-up to catch a flight back to Milan. Every time I say, 'This is the last one,' but when I come to booking I don't want to miss a whole day because I need to get back to work. There are four collections a year so we're overlapping with the autumn shows and putting ideas and mood boards together for the winter accessories collection. We also have to start dyeing threads for the specific fabrics in advance so there's always something to think about. It's intense because everything has to be finished by the end of July. Yikes.

Italy shuts down in August and the whole Missoni family goes to Puntaldia in Sardinia. It's the only time we all stop what we're doing and come together. I also managed to fit in a long weekend in Positano on the Amalfi coast with my boyfriend Eugenio Amos [a racing car driver] a couple of weeks ago. The weather was amazing so we spent most of the time on the rocks or bobbing around in a Gozzo fishing boat. We stayed at one of my favourite hotels in the world, Il San Pietro di Positano, which is built into the rocks. It's got that 1950s Italian Riviera feel. I love all the halterneck ruched swimming costumes and espadrilles from that period.

I almost always wear Missoni Mare bikinis; it's the one thing I rarely buy from other brands. I'm normally quite relaxed about wearing other brands but it's the line that I look after, so I design all the kaftans, bikinis and other seaside garments. The Italians are very loyal and I see a lot of people wearing my creations on the beach. I'm my own harshest critic so it's hard to relax when I'm constantly thinking how I could improve this or that and scrutinising the other bathers.

I don't know if Italians are more stylish than other nationalities at the seaside but if I see somebody wearing something I like I'll take a stealthy photograph, usually of old ladies who are still wearing clothes from when they were younger. I recently saw a lady wearing a vintage Missoni skirt in Positano, so I took a picture and sent it back to the office in Milan. I rarely take photographs of Italian men. I'm really not into the whole Speedo thing and I don't know why so many men insist on wearing them. I think it's probably got something to do with them showing off, but thank God not all Italian men buy into it. Unfortunately, sometimes a certain fashion spreads around a country, everybody falls for it and then it's hard to shake off.
The new Missoni store is now open at 138 New Bond Street (missoni.com)