Raisa Ignatov was one of the top Samantran fashion designers. Her main specialty was Samantran traditional clothing for women or ie as it was called in Samantra. Back home in Samantra, Raisa was very well known with prominent Samantran women wearing her design including the
President of the Duma,
the Minister of external affairs or
Princess Ludmila. After the Sacred War which ended in 1954 Samantra began a long process of recovering and by the early 2000s the nation was already prosperous and the theocracy firmly established in Samantra. The Samantran Orthodox Church, using its massive influence over all social life, greatly promoted “a return to tradition” and the use of traditional clothing for women was part of that agenda.
Raisa Ignatov was one of the designers that embraced fully the “return to tradition” mantra and focused almost exclusively on it. While in Samantra Raisa’s designs gained national attention and sold extremely well, selling them aboard was a different matter. There she faced much tougher competition and a more diverse public. It was for this reason that Raisa Ignatov decided to participate at the Gowu Fashion Show 2022, to gain some spotlight so that more people heard of her designs abroad. She was confident in her work and knew there was a market out there for them. Whether that market was in Zaporozh, Halych, Volhynia or maybe somewhere completely different and unexpected like Zamenhuf, she didn’t know exactly.
Unfortunately for her, ignorance on much of international politics would cost her. First because she didn’t realize that Gowu was part of Achkaerin and secondly because she underestimated just how much it could cost her on a personal level to take part in such an event in Achkaerin. Getting the visa for the event has hard enough since there was no Achkaerin embassy thanks to the Samantran government. Getting the attention of the OPCS (Office for the Protection of the Church and its State), Samantra’s intelligence agency, was much worse. She had to explain to them for hours on end why she needed to go to Achkaerin when the Rus’ world had a much better alternative such as Lodja. And she had to be convincing enough since she knew that upsetting them could mean losing her Church endorsement for her designs which in Samantra basically meant bankruptcy. So when most of her models called her saying that under no circumstances would they attend an event in Achkaerin she understood their reasons. Still Raisa didn’t give up, she used the few models that agreed to take the trip and went to Gowu.
Raisa, like most Samantrans, was not well versed in foreign languages. She spoke some Ardian/Latin and that was about it. Still she managed get along fine in Gowu and make the necessary preparations to present her designs.
Spoiler: Raisa’s fashion parade show Would the hosts, guests and regular visitors like her designs? That would remain to be seen. In case visitors wanted to try out some of her designs or even buy them, Raisa set up an exhibition stand where they could do just that.
Visitors at the fashion show would be greeted at the entrance of the building and invited to try out traditional Samantran
cazonac and wine and also visit Raisa’s exhibition stand.
Raisa Ignatov, featured above, was not shy to wear her designs and today she did just that. She walked across the hall to see who had arrived, where the hosts were since she had been too busy with her fashion parade to notice the obvious.