Simona Murialdo’s Illustrations are Fluent in Fashion

Simona Murialdo’s illustrations deserve more hype. Having studied Graphic Design in Milan and Fashion Illustration in London where she lived and worked for many years, she’s currently back in Milan, where she also teaches Graphic and Multimedia Design at the prestigious Istituto Marangoni, while consulting as Fashion Illustrator and Art Director.

Her illustrations often focus on fashionable subjects, mostly women whose features are made to look exaggerated (big bulging eyes, an unnatural sheen to their skin). “Never draw to please others,” is Murialdo’s motto. “Only draw to please yourself.”

According to Murialdo, her growth as an illustrator hasn’t stopped after graduating. It also didn’t begin with her studies. “I have been drawing since I can remember,” she recalled in an interview with I Love Illustration. “I recall coming home from school and sketching long haired princesses with beautiful and improbably- voluminous over-wide-long dresses covered in flowers and ribbons.”

In her teens, she admits, she imagined becoming a fashion designer, but after realizing that fashion design was more than just drawing, she decided to lean into the more artistic side of it—combining both her passions into a career in fashion illustration. “I let my illustrative and artistic side to take over and I drifted into Illustration and Graphic Design,” she explains.

Nowadays, her clients include publications like Oxford Press and Elle UK. Scroll down to see some of her work.