In the federal Finno-Ugric center today presented the invention of a professional fashion designer Irina Arsentieva. Journalists attacked the fashion designer long before the scheduled press conference. As a result of a spontaneous poll, to which the culprit of the event meekly agreed, the fashion designer’s wife, ethnofuturist artist Pavel Mikushev, who acts as a moderator at the event, had to save her from the hungry details of the “sharks of the pen.”

Photo by Kirill Zatrutin

The subject of the invention of Irina Arsentieva is a revived method of seamless design of clothing. According to Irina, since the Middle Ages, not a single tailor or fashion designer has thought of such a simple thing. The method was born back in 2001, but it was only introduced to the general public today.

The reason was the victory of Irina Arsentieva at the International Invention Competition in Sweden. In the nomination “World around” she outperformed her competitors, winning a silver medal. The fashion designer from Taiwan became the gold medalist. True, according to Irina, his victory could be a “political step”: good relations with Asia are important for the Scandinavians. At least, the chairman of the jury, amazed by the ingenious simplicity of the invention, devoted much more time to the second-place winner than to the winner. The result of this communication, perhaps, will be the opening of a joint Komi-Swedish enterprise in the future. In the meantime, the Swede suggested to Irina one of the ways to use her invention.

It lies in the healing and developmental function of making clothes, in addition to the utilitarian one. Thus, Arsentieva’s invention can be useful three times: to become an exclusive item of women’s wardrobe, to serve as a means of rehabilitation for people with weak motor skills as a result of an accident or an illness. Such patients can “weave” the future wardrobe, while still in a hospital bed. Thirdly, this is a great educational game for children – it develops spatial thinking and trains motor skills. In addition, visually impaired people can weave fashionable things.

To create modular clothes, Irina was inspired, by her own admission, by laziness. For 13 years, the master taught fashion history, modeling and sketching at the Syktyvkar Technological College. One day, she discovered that she had begun to forget the technique of construction. Not wanting to return to patterns and measurements, she came up with the idea of ​​fastening the details of clothing together with loops, while giving it the desired shape. So, you can build up a jacket with this technology in 6-8 hours, weave a simple scarf in 15 minutes. In order to dissolve the product, unlike Penelope, who spent the night on the destruction of the bound, the modular master spends from five minutes. After that, you can start creating a new thing from the same raw materials.

Raw materials Irina and her colleagues use exclusively domestic. True, he fears that he will have to go abroad for silk threads. She creates a fragment of a future product from a tape, which consists of 70 percent wool, using a machine stitch. In the future, he plans to abandon it. Further, the loops that make up the tape are threaded into one another and fixed along the bottom of the product with the ends of the tape, which turn into a decorative element. One of the male journalists compared the manufacturing technique to a “zip”.

– Yes, – the inventor was delighted, – this is really on the principle of “lightning”, only from textiles and made by hand.

In addition to ribbons, the fashion designer uses diamond-shaped elements as designer parts. True, their production is a laborious process, so Irina saves all the proceeds from the sale of the exclusive for the purchase of a sewing machine. Its purchase will cost the inventor 700 thousand rubles.

She plans to open a branded and online store where it will be possible to purchase not only ready-made clothes, but also a do-it-yourself designer. The designer also plans to establish a franchise system.

Irina Arsentyeva is not afraid of “theft” of the technology, ingenious in its simplicity: she has already received a Russian patent and is now drawing up an international one.

– We would even be glad: in case of illegal borrowing of ideas, our legal protection will allow us to make good money on unlucky thieves.

On the tables placed along the walls were presented things that could be bought right there. The journalists immediately began to try on vests, coats, berets, scarves and hoods. The opinions of potential buyers about prices ranging from five hundred to seven and a half thousand rubles diverged. Someone exclaimed: “How expensive!” Others were astounded by the low cost to handcraft. Still others simply muttered: “These are the prices …”. It was difficult to understand in this case whether they seem ridiculous or sky-high. The inventor herself was inclined to the fact that her things were a little expensive for local customers.

– But such is the strategy of the enterprise. Craftswomen have to learn in the process of creating clothes, it uses only manual labor. In the future, we will go to lower prices due to automated labor and new types of raw materials, – explained Arsentieva.

In addition, real connoisseurs, in her opinion, should be ready to pay for the possession of the only exclusive thing in the world. So far, the main part of Irina’s collection has remained in Sweden: the participants and guests of the invention competition have sold it with a bang.