WHEN DEEPICA MUTYALA PARTNERED
her beauty brand with Mattel to launch
the first ever South Asian CEO Barbie
doll—made in Mutyala’s image—she
wanted to make sure it was authentic.
Growing up in Sugar Land, Texas, she’d
had to navigate both colorism within
her South Asian community and West-
ern beauty standards outside of it. (She
recalls wearing blue contact lenses and
highlighting her hair blond when she
was younger, in an attempt to fit in.)
And so the doll not only pairs a “power
red” pantsuit with Indian -style bangles
and jhumkas— traditional South Asian
earrings—but also has darker skin.
“Whatever we can do to make people
feel more seen,” says the 32-year-old
entrepreneur.
That’s something of a mission state-
ment for Mutyala, who went viral with
a 2015 YouTube video showing how to
use red lipstick to color- correct hyper-
pigmentation on darker skin tones. The
video racked up nearly 11 million views
and highlighted something beyond a
useful makeup hack: most beauty prod-
ucts are not developed with people of
color in mind and often do not meet
their needs. To reach this huge mar-
ket, she launched Live Tinted in 2018
as an online community, centering con-
versations around identity and culture.
By 2019, Mutyala had taken members’
feedback to develop the innovative
Huestick, an all-in-one color corrector,
lipstick, eye shadow, and blush devel-
oped with people of color in mind. She
raised $3 million from investors, includ-
ing beauty mogul Bobbi Brown.
Live Tinted now plans to introduce a
foundation product “by us, for us, cre-
ated with intentionality.” Mutyala isn’t
deterred by the fact she’s up against
much bigger industry players. “I really
feel like this community is rooting for
me,” she says. “So I just keep going.”
UNITED STATES
Deepica
Mutyala
A beauty entrepreneur
for every skin tone
BY AYESHA JAVED
PHOTOGRAPH BY JASMINE ARCHIE FOR TIME