Explore what inspires Studio Mucci, the internet’s most colorful creator
Image: Graphic: Allison CorrPhoto: Amina Mucciolo
Radiant bursts of bright, luminous color are always a treat. But in a month dominated by grey skies and chilly temperatures—and that’s before you start reading the news—a shot of kaleidoscopic sunshine courtesy of Studio Mucci is more necessary than ever. Studio Mucci is the name of the brand and creative multimedia design studio created by Amina Mucciolo, a Los Angeles-based creative whose Instagram profile describes her as a “human rainbow” as well as a visual artist and designer. Her creativity spans a number of mediums—illustration, interior design, fashion—and Mucciolo is an artist who lives her art, taking every aspect of her life and using it as an opportunity to create. Her signature palette can range from pastel to neon, but always swirls together bright shades—she’s especially fond of pink and purple—into a joyful eruption of positivity and color.
Her work is sunny, but Mucciolo’s journey hasn’t been an easy one. Mucciolo has been upfront about the difficulties she’s faced as a Black, queer person with autism on social media, as well as in her art. Although her art still radiates positivity: One of her prints features a frowning strawberry against a neon pink background with the caption, “It’s okay to be afraid, just don’t let fear have the last word.” As she told Buzzfeed News last summer, “I basically just want everybody to feel welcomed, loved, and accepted. And I try to use my social media platforms to serve that purpose.”
If only corporations felt the same way. Mucciolo has had her designs—and, even more appallingly, her image and identity—shamelessly appropriated more than once during her career, first when Mucciolo called out Lisa Frank for its “Lisa Frank Flat” in 2017. That space bore an eyebrow-raising resemblance to Mucciolo’s DTLA loft, which she called “Cloudland” and was profiled in Apartment Therapy as “the most colorful apartment in the world.” Then, in 2019, people started messaging Mucciolo about a doll made by toy company LOL Surprise that looked exactly like her. A fan petition, along with visual evidence of the parallels between Mucciolo’s likeness and the doll, were dismissed by the company’s CEO, and legal proceedings are still ongoing.
The A.V. Club asked Mucciolo to tell us a little bit more about her personal aesthetic, creative process, and pop cultural inspirations. This interview came together over several months, so she may be rocking a different playlist these days—but, as she makes clear, her commitment to color never wavers.
The A.V. Club: Has your aesthetic stayed the same throughout your life?
Amina Mucciolo: I think I developed my personal style when I was [about] 9, and I kept the same style until I was about 13. And then from high school until I think the age of 28, I didn’t have a personal style or aesthetic. Expressing myself was a low priority because I wanted to be liked. It was like I was an alien from another planet—my only goal was to please the other humans enough to at least just blend in. But even through all of this I still gravitated towards color. I couldn’t deny how good it made me feel. Eventually my focus shifted back to self expression, and I slowly started reverting back to my childhood aesthetic.
AVC: When did you first begin to experiment with color?
AM: When I was a child. I did a lot of crafts and they were always centered around colorful materials and objects. I remember being 5 or 6, playing around with different color patterns and stripes with a small plastic loom that had nylon loops. I also spent many hours as a child arranging things around our house in complicated color patterns and groupings. I feel like I came out of the womb obsessed with color.