Styling
Before I built two eco fashion brands, I was my family’s stylist. That’s where all of it started.
-
Styling is where my eco fashion career started, and my business too. I’ve loved fashion since I was a kid: beaded bracelets, embroidered denim, neighborhood runway shows with friends. I’ve styled my entire family for years, and since I settled in the US, a lot of that happens remotely.
Then it grew. There was a salon shoot in San Francisco in 2019. Sparkpick came in 2020, after The True Cost changed my life. SPARK + REBEL followed in 2022, and a collab with an Oakland salon in 2024. The job is the same every time: figure out who a person really is, then dress that, with pieces that already exist.
-
Stylist and creative director, solo. I do personal styling for women and men, looks for shoots, art direction and photo editing. For Sparkpick, I have a styling co-pilot.
-
Two eco fashion brands, Sparkpick and SPARK + REBEL, and 50+ happy women and men styled around the world. Styling also sent me back to school: four courses at the London College of Style, in personal styling, fashion styling, men’s styling and color analysis.
The Challenge
Every person is one of a kind, and a look only works when body shape, color and style all agree.
Body shape, color and style are the three whales of styling, as we say in Russian, and every person needs all three solved at once. When personal styling took off in the ’70s and ’80s, talking about body shapes was normal. Today it’s a sensitive topic, and a stylist has to get it right without making anyone feel judged.
Timeline
2026
Styling for Sparkpick and SPARK + REBEL
2022
Launched SPARK + REBEL
Fashion styling for photoshoots
Collaborative projects
2021–24
London College of Style
Fashion Styling Diploma, with distinction
Personal Styling Women’s Diploma, with merit
Personal Styling Men’s Diploma, with distinction
Color Analysis for Creatives Advanced Diploma, with distinction
Brand Your Social Media Certificate, with distinction
2020
Launched Sparkpick
Started curating eco fashion
Sustainable Fashion certificate, Copenhagen Business School
2021–24
Styling and art direction for films
Juicy Couture spec commercial
Gorgon City spec music video
1990s
First styling sessions with family and friends
First business at 12, selling upcycled and modified denim
The Design Pillars
Color is the fastest change
The right colors make you glow. The wrong ones make you look tired. Color analysis is one of my diplomas, and often the quickest win: same person, same closet, new energy.
Proportion, not labels
Body shape matters, labels don’t. No pears, no apples. I look at lines, balance and proportion, for women and men alike, and dress the body you have today.
Every style has a history
Style is the story a look tells. Knowing fashion history lets me borrow a ’60s shift or a ’90s cutout without it looking like a throwback, and tells me how to wear vintage now.
Part 01 — One stylist, two brands.
Overview
Sparkpick started in 2020 as an eco fashion blog, after The True Cost changed my life. It grew into a community of stylists and coaches, plus a pre-loved shop on Poshmark and eBay. SPARK + REBEL followed in 2022, bolder and upcycled. I’m the creative director and stylist for both, from the first blog posts to the Harajuku-inspired street style collections of 2025.
Tradeoff
I like to combine shoots: one set, one crew, looks for both brands. But the two brands aren’t the same, and neither are their colors. SPARK + REBEL is red. Sparkpick is lime yellow. Every shared shoot saves time and money, and every shared shoot blurs the line between them. The cost is brand differentiation.
Part 02 — Six people, six archetypes.
Overview
In June 2024, SPARK + REBEL teamed up with 96 Throckmorton, a newly opened salon in Oakland. The owner wanted vibrant photos celebrating the diversity of their community, for the salon walls and its social media. I built six looks around archetypes like The Outlaw, The Creative, The Innocent and The Hero. All of them came from upcycled SPARK + REBEL pieces, with a hair and makeup team bringing each one to life. Style isn’t just hair or clothes. It’s the personality and the story you’re telling.
Tradeoff
It was a super fast project, and we set up right inside the hair salon, so space was very tight. With six looks to get through, there was no room to spread out and no time to slow down. The space was small. The looks couldn’t be.
Part 03 — Upcycled yarn and wet hair.
Overview
In November 2019, before Sparkpick existed, I art-directed a shoot for Cetana, a hair salon in San Francisco. I coordinated the photography, shot a short video and edited the images into artworks for their marketing. The salon was partnered with Aveda, known for its vegan hair products, so the story was sustainability: upcycled yarn threaded through the hair, minimal cuts, wet-hair looks and nature-inspired collages layered in post.
Tradeoff
The salon owner was an artist at heart and very particular about the look. He wanted simple images, because they were going on his walls. I was going for maximalism and originality. Two artists, one wall.
The Result
50+ people styled, two brands built, and no plans to stop.
Styling started with my family and friends in 1990, and it’s still going. It built Sparkpick and SPARK + REBEL, sent me back to school at the London College of Style, and took me to sets from a San Francisco salon to an Oakland one. The archetype portraits are still hanging on the walls at 96 Throckmorton, and who knows, maybe the Cetana artworks are too. What I love most now are fashion events and photoshoots: a room full of people, a rack of pieces that already exist, and a look that tells someone’s story. It’s not a project. It’s a practice.
What this project led to
Styling led me down a lot of roads: two brands, art direction, costume design. But the loop I love most is this one. In 2013 and 2014 I was styling the looks for my film projects, Juicy Couture and Gorgon City. A decade later I came back to styling for performance, this time as a performer. This photo is from my first musical, in October 2026, and I helped style the looks you see here. Behind the camera then. On stage now.