From Siberiato the Coverof Vogue.
The story of a set designer who has been chosen.
“My aesthetic isn’t something I chose. It arrived with the snow.”
I grew up in Siberia. Winter from October to April — and for months at a time, the world was white on white. Snow on ground, snow on rooftops, pale sky meeting pale buildings. No contrast. No noise. Just space, and silence, and the strange beauty of things that barely differ from their background.
That’s my eye. That tension between what is there and what almost isn’t. The white set against white. The object that earns its place by existing at exactly the right angle.
I didn’t know it was an aesthetic. I didn’t know aesthetics were a profession. Where I grew up, everyone worked in petroleum. There were no artists around me. No set designers. No one who built things for a living that weren’t made of steel or oil. I didn’t know this job existed until I was already doing it.
Before I became a set designer, I was a Marketing Director. I hold a Master’s in Marketing and a postgraduate in Social Psychology. I have been the person writing the brief, approving the budget, and answering to the board for whether the campaign worked. I know what is at stake when a shoot happens — because I have sat on the other side of it.
That is what makes this different. I don’t interpret your campaign. I understand it.
The Work
Kept Calling.
In the third year of my career, I did something that felt either very brave or very foolish. I was working in Moscow — good clients, growing projects — but I didn’t feel like I belonged. My education wasn’t in art. My instincts were strong but I couldn’t always explain them in the language the industry used. I had impostor syndrome the way some people have a bad back: always there, occasionally debilitating.
So I went to Hong Kong. I reached out to Vogue Hong Kong cold, with nothing but my portfolio. They were surprised that someone of my level was reaching out to them.
That surprise surprised me more than anything. It was the last time I doubted whether I belonged in this industry.
The second time I tried to leave, it wasn’t about me. It was about everyone else.
I had spent years watching talented creative professionals accept conditions they shouldn’t have accepted — underselling themselves, getting used, having no one in their corner. I wanted to build something that would protect them. A talent agency. I had the connections, the credibility, the conviction.
Then circumstances changed. I found myself in Dubai — a new city, a different culture, a market I didn’t know, with rules I had to learn from the beginning. A talent agency only works when you know the territory. I didn’t.
So I started again. My first project in Dubai was a local campaign for Gucci x Adidas. That helped.
The third time, I needed stillness. I moved to Vietnam — not to build something, just to breathe. To find out who I was when I wasn’t performing.
What I found was unexpected. My first degree — IT management, the one I had always considered a detour — turned out to be a road I’d never actually taken. I spent nearly a year going deep into business process automation and AI. I was good at it. I was genuinely interested in it. I thought: maybe this is the one that sticks.
Then one phone call came from Dubai. One shoot.
I walked back onto a set and felt everything come back — the focused chaos, the team moving together, the moment the set is finished and you see it whole for the first time. Three months of consecutive bookings followed.
I stopped arguing with the obvious. This isn’t what I decided to do. It’s what I am. Three exits proved it better than any portfolio ever could.
Your Next CampaignStarts Here.
Start with a brief, a question, or just an idea.We’ll take it from there.