While the lively back-and-forth between Colby Mugrabi, founder of multidisciplinary media brand Minnie Muse, and artist and designer Sarah Coleman might make it seem as if they have been lifelong friends, it turns out the backstory to their new collaborative coloring book is a little more serendipitous. “I actually bought one of Colby’s sweatshirts from the Gagosian bookstore a while back and posted it on my Instagram story; then we started messaging,” says Coleman. “I think we recognized we have a shared aesthetic, in that we both like to bring humor into everything that we do.” On this, Mugrabi agrees: “It’s kind of like the ultimate quarantine friendship—we had actually never even met in person until a few weeks ago!”
All the same, their creative synergy was obvious from the get-go. “Back in March, we started talking about the projects we’ve been spending our time on during quarantine, and we came up with the idea of the coloring book just as a way for ourselves and for others to get creative,” says Mugrabi. “We really bonded over our love for Prada, and that was the first page we did. At the beginning, this was more of a fun project for us than anything. We asked ourselves, if we could be quarantined in a Prada room, what would it look like?”