"I think important creative decisions are made in the process of making an object."

“People wouldn’t describe me as smiley exactly,” Janina Pedan admits with a small, self-deprecating laugh. The Ukrainian-born set designer, renowned for the hauntingly beautiful visual feasts she masterminds for style bibles like Dazed and Confused and AnOther Magazine, is a carefully considered voice in an industry often dominated by caricature-like personalities. Just don’t expect her to make small talk. “I think people find me nice, but I’m not the most sociable person on set,” she adds.

Janina’s cool head has proved an inestimable asset. Born in 1984 in the Soviet Union, she moved to London in her early 20s to study fine art at Goldsmiths, University of London, after which she briefly pursued a career in the art world. It was an experience that she would later find i...