Constantin Prozorov is a Paris-based artist redefining digital collage as a cinematic language where surrealism, fashion, and storytelling merge. known for immersive worlds between dream and narrative, he has collaborated with Gucci, Louis Vuitton, and Moncler, translating brands into layered compositions. His first permanent installation for De Beers in Paris, Heritage Wall “The De Beers Story”, turns his visual grammar into a sculptural narrative at the rue de la paix flagship, commissioned by De Beers London.
From a fashion history perspective, Prozorov’s work represents a sophisticated evolution of the trompe-l’œil and surrealist traditions that have intersected with haute couture since the 1930s. Where Elsa Schiaparelli once collaborated with Salvador Dalí to disrupt the physical boundaries of textile and form, Prozorov utilises the digital realm as a fluid canvas to challenge contemporary visual culture. His method does not merely juxtapose luxury products with fantastical landscapes; instead, it establishes a rigorous dialogue between historical archives and futuristic iconography. by deconstructing the fixed imagery of luxury houses like Gucci and Louis Vuitton, he acts as a visual archaeologist, unearthing the core myths of these institutions and reassembling them into dynamic, multi-layered allegories that resonate with a digitally native generation.
This narrative depth is particularly evident in his monumental undertaking for De Beer’s London. The Heritage Wall at the Rue de la Paix flagship marks a critical moment where digital collage transcends the screen to become a permanent architectural relic. Historically, the great jewellery houses of Place Vendôme and Rue de la Paix have relied on traditional crafts—such as gouache drawings and meticulous metalwork—to convey prestige. Prozorov introduces a radical shift by integrating a sculptural narrative that retains the ethereal quality of digital composition while grounding it in the physical space of a historic luxury flagship. The installation functions as a living archive, charting “the de beers story” not through linear chronology, but through an emotional and atmospheric topography where rough diamonds, celestial motifs, and heritage motifs coexist.
in the broader landscape of luxury communication, Prozorov’s editorial language offers an antidote to the ephemeral nature of modern social media. While contemporary digital content often favours fleeting trends, his layered compositions demand extended contemplation, functioning much like the grand fashion illustrations of René Gruau or the meticulous set designs of Cecil Beaton in the twentieth century. by elevating digital collage into a fine art form, he provides luxury brands with a renewed sense of permanence and intellectual depth. His work proves that the digital medium, when guided by a profound understanding of fashion history and narrative structure, can evoke the same hand-crafted wonder as a piece of high jewellery or an haute couture gown.
We are proud that Mr Prozorov has granted his second interview to the editorial staff of fantamoda.it
Your work has long existed in suspension, inside screens, inside dreams. What did it feel like to grant gravity to your language for the first time?
It felt both intimate and transformative. For many years, my work existed on screens, but it was never purely two-dimensional in my mind. My digital collages and animations have always been driven by emotion and storytelling, with each composition unfolding like a small cinematic world. With the De Beers Heritage Wall, I had the opportunity to give that language physical gravity for the first time. The dream was no longer carried only by movement and animation, but also by depth, shadow, texture, and material presence. That was very emotional for me, because it made tangible something I had always felt: that my works were never just images, but worlds waiting to step into reality.
With Heritage Wall, collage becomes architecture. Did the wall resist you, or did it welcome your illusions?
It felt very natural to me. The wall welcomed my illusions because collage has always been architectural in the way I think and compose. I build each work layer by layer, almost like constructing an inner world. So translating that language into physical space did not feel like resistance, but like a very organic evolution. With the De Beers Heritage Wall “The De Beers Story”, I was able to let the composition expand beyond the screen and fully inhabit space. In that sense, it felt less like a departure and more like a natural continuation of my visual universe.
In the De Beers installation, diamonds, symbols of geological time, meet the velocity of contemporary storytelling. How did you negotiate those conflicting temporalities?
That tension was actually one of the most beautiful aspects of the project. Diamonds carry an almost cosmic sense of time, while contemporary visual culture moves with extraordinary speed. I wanted the work to hold both. With De Beers, I was not interested in illustrating heritage in a static way. I wanted to create a contemporary, immersive narrative that still respected the depth of the House’s history. That is why the installation moves between milestones such as “A Diamond Is Forever,” the Four Cs, conservation, responsibility, and the roots of the brand in South Africa and London. For me, the answer was not to choose one temporality over the other, but to let ancient time and modern imagination coexist in the same dream space.
Your compositions often feel cinematic, yet this project required inhabiting physical space. Did you think like a director, a scenographer, or an architect?
Probably closest to a director and a scenographer. My images have always been conceived almost like miniature film sets, where every object has a role, every colour has emotional weight, and every composition suggests a scene before or after the one you are seeing. With De Beers, that instinct expanded into space. I was thinking not only about the image itself, but about the viewer’s movement, the rhythm of discovery, and how an element changes when seen from the front versus from the side. So I wasn’t designing architecture in the conventional sense; I was staging atmosphere.
The legacy of surrealist women, Frida Kahlo, Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington, appears as an invisible constellation around your work. What fragments of their worlds did you take inspiration from?
What moves me in their work is not only the surreal image, but the psychological intimacy within it. With Frida Kahlo, I am drawn to the emotional symbolism, the way personal truth becomes visual language. With Remedios Varo, it is the sense of inner architecture, those mysterious, spiritual spaces that feel both intellectual and dreamlike. With Leonora Carrington, I love the coded mythology, the transformation of animals, women, and symbols into a secret language. I do not quote them literally, but I carry fragments of their sensibility: the poetic object, the feminine mystery, the feeling that an image can be both a story and a spell. This sits naturally within my own practice, where collage becomes a portal beyond ordinary reality.
Surrealism historically disrupted logic. In a luxury context, what does disruption look like today?
Today, disruption in luxury is not about shock for its own sake. It is about creating emotional dislocation in a world overloaded with polished images. We live in a moment of visual saturation, so true disruption means making people pause, feel, and enter another state of attention. In my work for Moncler, for example, I used mythical creatures, floral and animal prints, and unknown landscapes to move the brand away from product presentation into subconscious exploration. With Louis Vuitton, I approached heritage not as nostalgia, but as a multidimensional journey through past, present, and future. For me, disruption today means giving luxury back its power to dream.
The feminine surrealists often built intimate universes filled with coded objects. Which objects recur in your own subconscious vocabulary?
Certain objects return to me almost instinctively. Trunks, birds, trees, flowers, architectural fragments, celestial forms, mythological creatures, and animals all reappear in different ways. I think of them as emotional symbols rather than decorative motifs. In the Louis Vuitton work, the trunk became a kind of messenger between time periods, almost like a living object carrying memory, identity, and future possibility. In the De Beers installation, the tree, diamonds, London references, the Eiffel Tower, and wildlife all became symbolic anchors in a larger narrative. These objects are recurring because they allow me to bridge memory, fantasy, and storytelling.
Your vision has been compared to filmmakers like Tim Burton and Wes Anderson. In cinema, movement carries emotion. In sculpture, stillness must do the same. How did you translate motion into silence?
I tried to translate motion through tension rather than literal animation. In my digital work, movement often comes from loops, transitions, and layered transformation. In sculpture, that language has to become quieter. So I focused on suspended energy: the relationship between foreground and background, the suggestion that one form is about to emerge from another, the way shadow creates emotional vibration. Stillness can be very cinematic when composition holds a sense of latent movement. I wanted the De Beers Heritage Wall to feel like a paused dream, a moment of narrative held in breath. The silence becomes part of the emotion.
The Heritage Wall brings together ateliers, craftsmanship, and storytelling. Did collaborating with artisans alter the rhythm of your imagination?
Yes, absolutely. Working with artisans changed the rhythm from instant visual invention to something slower, more dialogic, more tactile. In digital collage, I can test and transform very quickly. In a physical installation, every layer has to pass through hands, materials, fabrication, and technical precision. That process made me more attentive to patience, restraint, and the beauty of craftsmanship. It did not reduce imagination; it deepened it. The dialogue with skilled European ateliers made the work more grounded, and I loved that exchange between dream and making.
Collage traditionally celebrates fragmentation. Yet diamonds symbolize unity, permanence, endurance. How did those opposing metaphors coexist?
That contrast interested me from the beginning. Collage is built through fragments, but not to remain fragmented. For me, collage is a way of creating a new unity from disparate elements. In that sense, it is actually very close to the symbolism of a diamond: pressure, transformation, refinement, coherence. With De Beers, I wanted the installation to preserve the richness of multiple narratives while allowing them to crystallize into a single emotional image. So fragmentation and permanence did not oppose each other; they completed each other. One is the process, the other is the state it reaches.
Moving from screen to architecture transforms an image into an environment. Did this shift change how you think about audience presence, no longer viewers, but inhabitants?
Yes, very much. On screen, the viewer encounters the work as an image. In space, the viewer enters into a relationship with it physically. That changes everything. I became much more aware of presence, scale, distance, and the choreography of attention. The audience is no longer just looking; they are approaching, passing, discovering, inhabiting. For me, that was one of the most exciting aspects of the De Beers installation. It opened a new way of thinking about storytelling, not only as something seen, but as something experienced spatially. It made me realize that my visual language can live not only in the imagination, but also around the body.
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