One night Oksana Alkhonsaeva saw her grandmother in a dream, and she said only one word to her: "Sew." Today the Buryat clothing she designs travels across all of Russia, from Moscow and Saint Petersburg to Yakutsk and Kamchatka. The Russian newspaper "Potok i Novaya Vkladka" published her story on 11 May 2026, and Global Voices translated it as part of a series on Indigenous rights.
Growing Up in a Buryat-Speaking Home
Oksana was born in 1984 in Ust-Ordynsky, a small village of about 15,000 people in Irkutsk Oblast. She is the youngest in the Konkeyev family, born after two boys. According to the article, her parents' families held on to their customs and spoke Buryat, which was not common at that time.
From childhood she loved clothes and sewing, playing with dolls and imagining herself as a fashion designer. She saw herself as similar to the heroine of the Mexican TV series "Simplemente María", the village girl who becomes a designer in the city.
However, her adolescence was difficult. In eighth grade she joined a new school and was immediately marginalized; her classmates mocked her and her full lips, and turned her name into an insult. She withdrew into herself and, wanting to understand why people behave this way, studied psychology and earned a university degree in it.
The Altargana Festival and the Beginnings of Sewing
Oksana worked at a center for preserving and developing the Buryat ethnic community. When the center merged in 2008, it organized the Altargana festival in Irkutsk. The first editions of the festival were held in 1994 in Mongolia, and it later grew in fame and began receiving visitors from around the world. Oksana says she had rarely seen traditional national dress before that, whereas at the festival she saw all the Buryat traditions in one place.
After her second maternity leave she worked in sales and in jobs far removed from sewing, and she sewed at night when her children were asleep. She had won her sewing machine in a contest. She made her first garment for her family and loved ones, as she wanted her children and her nephews to wear national dress and take care of their culture. The results were beautiful but very traditional; the clothes were sewn strictly according to the rules and could not be used in everyday life.
The Spotlight and Recognition
Oksana sought recognition for her work and took part in many fashion shows, and at one of them a journalist approached her and asked for an interview. She says she was named best fashion designer of the Ust-Orda Buryat district for 2023.
Oksana believes Buryat clothing is not merely a museum exhibit, and that her greatest inspiration is seeing people wear it. She begins by learning the shapes and sizes the client wants for everyday clothing, then "translates" their wishes into the language of Buryat dress.
The whole family now works with her: her husband is the organizer, her mother helps at shows, irons clothes and handles urgent jobs, and her father makes special razors and drives everyone where they need to go; her mother-in-law and sister-in-law help as well. Oksana admits with a laugh that she sometimes misses a stable, quiet working life, but being asked where to find clothing like hers brings her back to sewing every time.
Historical Background
The article notes that the Buryats are an indigenous Mongol people of Lake Baikal, and that Russian colonization of these parts of Siberia began around 1620 with the advance of the Cossacks. In the Soviet era, Buddhist institutions and Buryat leaders were suppressed, and in 1958 the authorities removed the word "Mongol" from the republic's name. It adds that Buryatia announced mobilization after Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and that Lyudi Baikala recorded 9,200 dead among Buryats and Irkutsk Oblast residents from 2022 to 2026.
Sources
- Global Voices الأصوات العالمية (CC BY 3.0)
