The children went to sleep at ten o’clock. Then Oksana Alkhunsaeva worked. She had a sewing machine. She won it in a competition. She had some fabric in the house. She had one hour before the night ended. In the day she worked in sales. It was not sewing work. Oksana knew that she must sew. But she did not know how.
One night she dreamed about her grandmother. Her grandmother was dead. In the dream her grandmother said one word: “Sew.” Oksana listens to her dreams. Today people order her clothes from all of Russia: from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yakutsk and Kamchatka.
Oksana was born in 1984 in Ust-Ordynsky. It is a small town in the Irkutsk region. About 15,000 people live there. Oksana had two big brothers. She was the youngest child. Her mother and father spoke Buryat at home. The Buryats are a people. They live near Lake Baikal. The family did not wear Buryat clothes every day. Her grandmother had gutuls. Gutuls are Buryat boots.
Oksana played with dolls. She made clothes for the dolls. She watched a TV show, Simplemente Maria. In the show a girl comes from a village to the big city. She makes clothes there. Little Oksana wanted this life too. Later she went to a new school. The children there were not kind to her. They laughed at her. She wanted to understand people, so she studied psychology at university.
In 2008 she got a job at a center for Buryat culture. That year the center made a big festival in Irkutsk. The festival is called Altargana. Altargana is a plant. The plant is small, but its roots are very long. Oksana saw many beautiful Buryat clothes at the festival. She said she looked at them and loved them. She thought about her own roots.
She made her first costumes for her family. She wanted her children to wear Buryat clothes. In 2023 she was the best designer in the Ust-Orda Buryat district. Now all the family helps her. Her mother irons the clothes. Her father makes special knives, and he drives the family to the shows.
Sometimes Oksana wants a calm office job again. Then a person comes to her and asks about a costume. She said that someone does not let her go and says one word: “Sew.”