Katya pavlenko

London-based art director specialising in beauty, fashion and innovation

As an art director, digital artist and a creative technologist with 5 years of experience in creative advertising, I build memorable, smart worlds around brands who dare to do things differently.

My perfect client is one that is open to experimenting and thinking outside the box while maintaining the brand ethos and thoughtful approach to accessibility.

Metaverse beauty week

A cutting-edge digital festival merging beauty with virtual reality across platforms like Decentraland, Roblox, and Spatial, with in-person events at Flannels, London. Featuring brands such as Neutrogena, Lush, and Lottie London, the event offered AR filters, digital wearables, and gamified experiences, redefining beauty marketing in the metaverse.

Brief: Make beauty brands forget they’re rivals and willingly share a metaverse catwalk.

I built the runway.

  • Flannels Beauty

    A branded beauty bar with integrated gamification features that held live events from beauty gurus

  • VALDE BEAUTY

    A gamified scene inspired by the iconic Valde lipstick where users could pose for virtual selfies and claim a wearable outfit in Decentraland

  • LUSH

    A giant LUSH island inspired by their bath-bomb collection where users could claim a wearable skin for their Spatial Avatar and vibe to a curated playlist

  • NEUTROGENA

    A series of mini-games narrated by Kerry Washington’s avatar: interact with the main pillars of healthy skin to learn more about Neutrogena’s skincare range and get wearable rewards

  • LOTTIE LONDON

    In Roblox, users could complete a treasure hunt to claim real-life rewards

  • LUSH

    In Decentraland, we prompted users to step into LUSH bath bombs and get transported to 3 different party spaces that visualised the mood and feel of each bath bomb

  • FLANNELS BEAUTY

    Interacting with Flannels Beauty Bar granted users wearable makeup looks for their avatars inspired by the curated summer makeup looks

Shiseido: #alivewithbeauty

For Shiseido’s 150th anniversary, we didn’t just throw a party — we built an AI-powered loyalty experience that turned users into collectors.
I led the creative for a sweepstake campaign featuring 150 limited-edition NFTs co-designed with AI and five groundbreaking women in beauty and tech.
Wrapped in immersive 360° content, the experience guided users through a futuristic take on loyalty.

I used DALL·E 2 when it was barely out of beta — and made it speak the language of five pioneering beauty-tech minds.
Prompt-engineering became part art, part brand strategy. Every visual was fed with insights pulled from interviews, briefs, and brand archetypes.
What I learned? AI doesn’t replace creativity — it amplifies the people behind it.

checked-out gpt

According to a PubMed study, 27.7% of participants reported a decline in decision-making abilities due to AI reliance.

I trained my own CheckedOutGPT–a bot that won’t do your work for you. It is sassy and annoying, and will not tolerate helplessness. Instead of giving you straight answers, it will drag you through the mud and MAYBE point you in some sort of direction to do your own work.

The challenge was to train the model that’s inherently helpful to be…unhelpful. With extensive prompt and tone of voice training, she’s now as checked out as an AI assistant can possibly be. It still has room to grow in the humour department, but…you know, AI.

Infinite fashion & dress x

A digital fashion drop before digital fashion drops were a thing. Born at the start of the metaverse fashion boom, this project partnered with i-D and DressX to spotlight emerging creators and reimagine self-expression for the virtual age.

Think glowing horns, liquid metal textures, and gowns that defy physics. I worked with 3D artists to bring surreal looks to life—part avatar styling, part world-building, all attitude. No physical runway, no stitching, no limits.

Brief: Make fashion feel untouchable, impossible, and more real than reality.
I turned imagination into inventory.

Clarins virtual world

Global skincare giant. Gen 9 Double Serum. Unreal Engine 5.

For Clarins' worldwide launch, I helped turn a product drop into a playable fantasy. We built a platform-agnostic, shoppable environment that blurred the line between luxury skincare and immersive storytelling—minus the traditional UX.

It worked anywhere, looked unreal (literally), and let users explore a high-fidelity world where clicking to buy felt more like questing for a skin glow-up.

Brief: Bring prestige beauty into digital world and introduce it to younger audience, as well as make it accessible and fun enough to retain and surprise the usual Clarins consumer.

PepsiCo’s Yula energy drink AR campaign includes 2 unique filters dedicated to Yula Energy brand energizing the Amazon rainforest with more than 2,500 trees.

For this campaign we created two target tracker filters: one for a dedicated mural i Ghent, Belgium; and one for AR packaging of the drink can. Both filters include animated 2D and 3D objects.

Yula Energy

Sally Hansen Miracle Gel Merry & Bright

Together with CULT London we created a Christmas campaign for Sally Hansen’s Glitters. With a hand tracker used to generate glitters we also solved a problem of nodding to a nail care brand without necessarily creating a nail try-on filter.

Beauty all the way…

Beauty AR filters that challenge reality and go beyond laws of nature were and still are my favourite type of work. Making makeup with 3D objects and materials is always a great challenge for me. I believe makeup should not only be pretty - it can be scary, weird, and most importantly, it can tell a story.