How Buryat fashion designer Oksana Alkhunsaeva stitched her life back together in Russia

For her, a Buryat costume is not a museum exhibit; it’s important to see the person

Originally published on Global Voices

Oksana Alkhunsaeva. Image via Glubina.me. Used with permission.

This article was first published in Russian by online Russian media Potok and Novaya Vkladka on May 11, 2026. Global Voices translated it into English, edited it for clarity, and is republishing it with permission from Potok and Novaya Vkladka. This post is also part of Global Voices’ August 2026 Spotlight series, “Indigenous Rights.” You can support this coverage by donating here.

One night, Oksana had a dream. She dreamed of her late grandmother. In the dream, her grandmother said just one word: “Sew.” Today, outfits by Buryat costume designer Oksana Alkhunsaeva are ordered from all over Russia: from Moscow and St. Petersburg to Yakutsk and Kamchatka.

Oksana was the youngest child in the Khunkheev family, a Buryat family. She was born in 1984 in Ust-Ordynsky, a settlement of about 15,000 people in the Irkutsk region. She was a long-awaited daughter, born after two boys. Her parents’ family observed traditional rituals and spoke Buryat, even though that was not customary at the time. Oksana recalls that from childhood she “saw everything Buryat” and that “everything was done as though that was simply the natural way things should be.”

The Buryats are a Mongolic people, indigenous to the Lake Baikal region. Historically, they formed part of the wider Mongol cultural and political world, while retaining numerous Mongol clan and tribal identities. Traditionally, they constituted the major northern subgroup of the Mongols.

Russian colonization of these parts of Siberia began around the 1620s, with the forceful military advance of the Russian army — Cossacks at the time — and their conquest of the East of Siberia. They built fortresses, imposed tributes (with the Buryats being made to pay regular fees to the Russians), and eventually displaced existing political ties with Mongol rulers. Buryat communities repeatedly resisted, attacked Russian positions, or fled south into Mongolia before Russian authority was established through the late 17th and early 18th centuries.

Under the Russian Empire and especially the Soviet Union, colonial integration deepened through land and economic redistribution, collectivization, repression of Buddhist institutions and Buryat elites, and increasing cultural Russification. Soviet authorities also removed “Mongol” from the republic’s name in 1958.

Today, most Buryats remain within the Russian Federation, particularly in the Republic of Buryatia. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Buryatia has also reportedly experienced disproportionately high military casualties and mobilization. Independent media outlet Ludi Baikala counted 9,200 people from Buryatia and the Irkutsk region killed in the 2022–2026 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In the context of this history, the Khunkheev family did not wear traditional clothing in everyday life, but Oksana’s grandmother had real gutuls (Buryat boots). Oksana loved both clothing and sewing from an early age. She played with dolls and imagined herself as a fashion designer, inventing patterns and making clothes for them. She watched the then-popular TV series “Simply Maria” (“Simplemente Maria”), in which an ordinary Mexican girl moves from a remote rural province to the capital, Mexico City, to become a designer. Little Oksana from Ust-Ordynsky dreamed of the same thing.

Her teenage years were difficult. In eighth grade, she transferred to a new school and immediately became an outcast. She was used to her brothers protecting her and her father calling her his “beauty.” But at school, classmates mocked her full lips, twisted her surname into insults, and kicked her bag of textbooks down the corridors. Oksana learned to shut herself off; even today, any conflict triggers what she calls a delayed-reaction syndrome. The pain and hurt do not hit immediately; they come hours or days later, and are very difficult to process. Wanting to understand why people behave this way, she went on to earn a university degree in psychology.

Three generations of the Khunkheev-Alkhunsaev family. Used with permission.

It was by chance that Oksana came to work at the Center for the Preservation and Development of the Buryat Ethnic Group. In 2008, when she joined, the Center was organizing the Altargana festival in Irkutsk.

This festival for Buryat communities was first held in Mongolia in 1994. Since then, it has become international in scope and grown into a large-scale event attended by people from across the globe — from Inner Mongolia in China to France. Oksana was completely astonished both by its scale and by what she saw there.

“Before that, I had barely seen our national clothing. But at the festival, all the richness of Buryat traditions was there at once. I watched and admired it,” she recalls.

Ust-Ordynsky is Oksana’s hometown. Oksana takes measurements from young dancers at a cultural center. Used with permission. 

The festival is named after the altargana plant, which, with its small leaves and modest golden-yellow flowers, looks humble but has an incredibly well-developed root system. Oksana thought a great deal about her own roots and then understood what exactly she wanted to create — but she was still a long way from that point.

After her second maternity leave, Oksana worked sales and other jobs unrelated to sewing. She could only sew late in the evening, when the workday was over, and her children were asleep, but dreams were never something abstract to her; she always paid attention to whatever came to her in that way.

She had a sewing machine she had won in a competition; there was a piece of fabric lying around, the children fell asleep at ten, and late at night, she had a little free time. Oksana knew that she needed to sew, but didn’t know how. She made her first costumes for relatives and loved ones, as she wanted her children, nieces, and nephews to wear national clothing and take an interest in their culture.

The results began to look beautiful, but they turned out to be too traditional: Clothing made strictly “according to the canon” simply had nowhere to be worn. She also wanted recognition and visibility, so Oksana tried to participate in different fashion shows. At one of them, a journalist approached her and asked for an interview; it was exactly the way Oksana had seen it happen in “Simply Maria.”

Although the runway, bright lights, and professional models looked like the dream she had imagined as a child, over time Oksana has come to see that her main aspiration is for people to wear her clothes. Still, she adds that she was named best designer in the Ust-Orda Buryat district in 2023.

For her, a Buryat costume is not a museum exhibit; it is important to see the person and begin the work with that individual. First, she tries to understand what shapes and silhouettes the client likes in ordinary clothing, and only then does she “translate” those preferences into the language of Buryat costume.

Now, Oksana’s entire family works together. Her husband is the organizer; her mother helps at fashion shows, irons garments, and finishes urgent sewing; her father makes special knives and drives everyone where they need to go. Her mother-in-law and sister-in-law help as well.

Laughing, Oksana admits that she sometimes wants to go back to a calm, stable office life — but when people approach her and ask, “How can I find a costume like yours?” she realizes that every time thoughts of leaving enter her mind, life seems to deliberately send her a sign: “It’s as though someone won’t let me go and keeps saying, ‘Sew.’”