Royal couture. Vol I

Royal couture. Vol I

Aidai Imankulova

Translator Aidai Imankulova

Illustrator Aidai Imankulova

Cover designer Aidai Imankulova

Illustrator DALL-E

Cover designer DALL-E

© Aidai Imankulova, 2026

© Aidai Imankulova, translation, 2026

© Aidai Imankulova, illustrations, 2026

© Aidai Imankulova, cover design, 2026

© DALL-E, illustrations, 2026

© DALL-E, cover design, 2026

ISBN 978-5-0070-9241-8 (т. 1)

ISBN 978-5-0070-9242-5

Created with Ridero smart publishing system

Part I. The Novel: Couture Flora

A Note to the Reader

Contemplating Sakura Through Digital Code

Welcome to my virtual Haute Couture runway, where the rigorous laws of geometry intertwine with the fragile art of untamed nature. Before you lies a unique artbook, Royal Luxury, born at the very intersection of two distinct worlds. This is neither a mere book nor a conventional clothing catalogue. To me, this project has become a definitive manifesto of absolute femininity, one that I have brought to life in two entirely different dimensions.

In the first part — my literary novel, Couture Flora — you will immerse yourself in the vivid, dramatic story of how this universe came to be. You will walk the entire path alongside the protagonist — from her first sleepless nights in a cramped, rented room in St. Petersburg and her quiet mutiny against soulless, shapeless oversize, to her ultimate triumph at exclusive high-society receptions. Into this plot, I have woven real-life drama: you will witness the exact tears, the grueling deadlines, and the icy corporate hierarchy from which this project was born.

The second part is that very legendary, alphabetical catalogue of the Royal Luxury collection, which my heroine sculpted right before your eyes. In it, the Word of the Writer fuses seamlessly with the Form of the Designer. Every single gown — from the austere “Calla” to the predatory “Orchid” — has been broken down according to a flawless mathematical alphabet.

This album is an entirely independent, author-driven project, born of a singular creative vision from the very first spark of an idea to its final materialization. Computer tools and graphic networks became my obedient digital brush, allowing me to translate the finest fantasy sketches from my imagination onto these pages with absolute, razor-sharp precision.

I am deeply convinced that a grand idea can be articulated in many ways. As a writer, I construct tangible worlds using letters and metaphors. As a high-fashion designer, I speak the language of structural pattern cutting, the architecture of lines, and the liquid movement of premium textiles. Within this edition, they become one.

Authors are rarely perfect, but their creations are eternal.

Turn the page. It is time to uncover the secrets of Couture Flora, to translate the hidden language of plants into the dialect of exclusive evening wear, and to discover where this journey truly began.

With love,

Aidai Imankulova

Prologue: Free Fall into St. Petersburg

The era of masking genuine sincerity beneath a veneer of cold, editorial gloss was approaching its zenith. St. Petersburg greeted Alina with an icy, piercing gale, yet inside her burned a wild, almost palpable dream. Tucked away in her backpack was a first-class bachelor’s degree, and in her mind — a rigorous mathematical algorithm capable of rewriting the rules of Haute Couture forever.

She had arrived in this city as a total nobody: just another provincial girl scrolling through Avito listings for a cheap sub-let to pay for a tiny, run-down room. The young woman stood at the threshold of two worlds, watching the neon lights of the evening metropolis bleed into the rain-slicked asphalt, turning the streets into a living watercolor canvas. Alina did not yet know that in a matter of months, her sketches would be whispered about at closed-door galas, or that her strict adherence to corporate hierarchy would become the ultimate challenge for the man helming a multi-billion-dollar IT empire. This was her first step into the void. The very step that set Couture Flora in motion.

Chapter 1. A Manifesto Against Oversize

The initial weeks in St. Petersburg greeted Alina with an endless procession of heavy rains and gale-force winds blowing fiercely off the Neva. Yet, the city failed to intimidate her. To her eyes, it resembled a vast, graphic equation teeming with countless variables that she was uniquely destined to solve. A crystalline objective lay ahead: a master’s program at a prestigious technological university, lectures in advanced geometry, and the real-world execution of her proprietary digital algorithms. She had arrived to conquer, even if it meant rebuilding her entire life from absolute zero.

However, St. Petersburg was quick to bring her back to earth. The first obstacle Alina collided with was a crushing, pervasive loneliness amidst millions of strangers, compounded by the bleak, utterly featureless fashion of the northern capital. The city was completely drowned in a sea of grey, shapeless oversize. Wherever Alina cast her gaze — whether along the neon-lit Nevsky Prospekt, inside the rumbling subways, or within the austere university halls — she was surrounded by people clad in fabric sacks. Women willingly surrendered their natural grace, burying the elegant curve of their hips and the fine contour of their waists inside gargantuan hoodies, monstrous puffer coats, and heavy, knit cocoons.

Beholding this absolute tyranny of knitwear chaos, the young woman staged a silent internal mutiny. Conditioned to the strict harmony of the golden ratio and the flawless precision of drafting lines, she viewed this trend as nothing short of a crime against femininity. She felt a physical craving for the structural rigidity of corsetry, the sharp definition of tailored lines, and the noble, heavy rustle of premium silk.

“This isn’t fashion; it’s a total capitulation to the winter cold,” Alina would mutter to herself, settling down each evening in her cramped, rented room.

Outside her window, the rain drummed a steady rhythm, while golden rivulets of light from passing cars bled across the glass pane. It was precisely here, beneath the warm, amber glow of a modest desk lamp, that her clandestine project was born. Alina began the meticulous process of digitizing botanical atlases. Staring intently into the monitor of her aging laptop, she discerned what eluded everyone else: the sacred, flawless proportions of nature itself. The sweeping line of a calla lily petal was a pristine mathematical parabola. The spiral geometry of an unfurling rose bud was a mesmerizing, mathematically perfect logarithmic calculation.

Alina’s fingers still retained the memory of touching rare cuts of exquisite fabrics, and she set to work crafting digital patterns engineered to restore women to their true, sovereign luxury. No more formless sacks. Instead, her vision demanded hyper-fitted, razor-sharp corsetry, the flawless sculpting of silhouettes, and the high-fashion geometry of living petals.

This audacious endeavor doubled her daily burden, demanding not only endless nocturnal hours hunched over her keyboard but also grueling stretches behind the sewing machine. The sole person privy to her secret was Liza — a former classmate who had helped Alina source premium tailoring supplies. Dropping by for a visit and catching sight of the open project files on the monitor, Liza waved her hands in a flurry of pure emotion:

“Alina, you are an absolute genius, but you know absolutely nothing about the business of luxury! We are targeting a global market here; we want to secure international pre-orders and procure exclusive textiles directly from Dubai or Milan! English is the universal language of high luxury. Yet, looking at your digital blueprints, half of your technical construction notes are still written in Russian! No international factory pattern-cutter will ever decipher this bilingual mess if we ship these files off to production. You need to overhaul this immediately — we demand a seamless global reach!”

Alina was forced to re-engineer her rigorous system completely on the fly. Under the weight of sheer exhaustion, a localized linguistic chaos erupted across her pristine blueprints. Her mind spun in circles: she frantically translated complex botanical nomenclature, striving to substitute her familiar Russian phrases with the poetic prose of “The Language of Flowers.” Yet, her physical strength was thoroughly depleted, leaving rapid, handwritten Cyrillic annotations haphazardly interspersed with English technical stitching notes across the project files.

“Let it be,” Alina thought defiantly, saving yet another bilingual tapestry onto her flash drive. “True connoisseurs of couture will see the history of my struggle within this chaotic blend, rather than a sanitized, sterile studio gloss. The only thing that matters is forcing this world to cast off its oversized sacks and remember the meaning of true royal luxury.”

Chapter 2. The “Aristocratic Porcelain” Capsule

The sole grounded yet insurmountable obstacle remained unchanged: the international standard of luxury demanded a flawless material execution, while the necessary shades of premium silk, organza, and custom hardware required an immense fortune. Half of her university stipend and modest personal savings had already been swallowed up by the initial meters of fabric, leaving the project only a fraction of the way toward completion. To ensure her “Aristocratic Porcelain” capsule did not remain a mere cluster of pixels trapped inside her laptop, Alina desperately needed a stable source of income — one that would not compromise her precious nocturnal hours.

Opening her phone, she typed the Avito.ru address into the search bar. The platform’s algorithms delivered the ideal vacancy in a single click: “A major IT conglomerate is seeking a front-desk receptionist. Requirements: dedication, articulate speech, and strong PC proficiency.” The highly structured, rotating shift schedule would allow her to seamlessly balance her corporate duties with her master’s classes, while the salary would cover her baseline living expenses and grant her the opportunity to procure additional materials.

On the eve of her interview, Alina’s room had fully devolved into a battlefield. Due to her forced, rigorous economizing, the digital precision of her pattern drafts constantly had to adapt to a harsh material reality. Thus, the magnificent “Freesia” gown — which radiated a deep, icy emerald hue inside her graphic editor — came to life under the rhythmic clatter of the sewing machine from a chance roll of lavender satin. Alina’s fingers caught the refreshing chill of the textile as the needle pierced through the dense, premium weave of the threads.

“Let this forced color variation become the signature feature,” Alina thought wearily, pulling the laces of another rigid, boned corset construction tight. “True couture is born within limitations. My personal flora will bear the scent of chaos, sleepless nights, and raw, beautifully flawed life.”

The next morning, Alina dressed in strict compliance with a sterile corporate dress code: a crisp white shirt, a basic black pencil skirt, and her hair swept up into an immaculate, tightly pinned bun. No avant-garde makeup, no expensive accessories — she presented the image of a modest, unpretentious student. She did not possess the slightest inkling of the powerful, winning lottery ticket she held in her hands by virtue of her sheer authenticity.

Typically, women harboring ambitions of capturing the attention of wealthy, high-caliber men of Pavel’s stature engineered elaborate, highly strategic campaigns. They spent entire fortunes in elite beauty salons, purchased loud, exhibitionist designer ensembles, and spent hours staking out his location in exclusive restaurants. Yet there, they invariably collided with a fortress-like wall of private security, cynical associates, and artificial high-society pretension. Pavel was utterly unreachable. He was conditioned to maintain a total defense, because beneath the surface of every such manicured beauty, his subconscious immediately flagged a predatory “huntress” tracking his billions.

With Alina, the universe enacted the exact opposite script. Instead of a fleeting, five-second glance in a raucous nightclub, she received an official invitation to an interview within his glass citadel, towering over a prestigious district of St. Petersburg. When she stepped into the intimidatingly luxurious, futuristic business center with its polished marble floors and mirrored partitions, her simple attire drew a sharp contrast against the sleek, long-legged runway nymphs who occasionally floated past in clouds of niche, expensive perfume. Yet, her gaze betrayed not a hint of intimidation. The morning sun pierced through the colossal glass atrium, fracturing into millions of brilliant sparks across the high-gloss surfaces.

When Pavel entered the boardroom, Alina rose and gracefully inclined her head in a subtle, deeply respectful bow — a reflection of her rigorous provincial upbringing. Exactly two meters of a highly polished executive table separated them. There was no trace of flirtation. Pavel took his seat directly opposite her, and in that exact fraction of a second, time inside the sun-drenched office did not merely slow down — it ceased to exist entirely.

Their eyes locked in a direct gaze. It was a silent, intellectual duel, one in which Pavel’s cynical high-society armor sustained a fracturing blow for the first time in memory. Within the clear, calm depths of Alina’s eyes, there was none of the predatory evaluation he had grown to despise — only a resonant modesty, a mathematical serenity, and a soft, unyielding dignity. She reached down, meticulously straightening the edge of her flawlessly pressed white cuff.

Chapter 3. The “Royal Volume” Capsule

Alina’s life transformed into a flawlessly calibrated chronometer. In the mornings — complex formulas and thesis defenses in her master’s program; from afternoon until late evening — the reception desk at Pavel’s shining IT conglomerate of glass and steel. The routine was grueling, but this very repetition granted her something that not a single top model in St. Petersburg could buy: time and the power of constant presence.

In the world of high fashion and elite restaurants where Pavel usually orbited, all encounters were built on the principle of a singular, blinding flash. Beautiful women spent weeks preparing for a single evening with him, but this conveyor belt of identical, airbrushed masks quickly faded from his memory. With Alina, however, the iron law of regular contact took effect. Whether Pavel wanted it or not, their universes now collided every single morning. Bringing reports for his signature, greeting couriers with critical documents, brewing strong espresso before a high-stakes board meeting — these brief, daily five-minute encounters forged a powerful mental connection.

Pavel saw her in all her states: focused, exhausted, smiling, instantly resolving corporate emergencies. She was quietly becoming an indispensable and highly reliable anchor in his everyday life.

Yet, contrary to Pavel’s expectations, Alina made no attempt to exploit this advantage. For the first two months, she maintained her distance so flawlessly that corporate hierarchy might as well have been her middle name. No lingering smiles, no flirtatious inflections, no lingering glances or accidental touches when handing over folders. Just polite, cool, crystal-clear professionalism. Alina viewed Pavel strictly as the chief executive officer and the employer who paid her salary on time.

And this was exactly what began to subconsciously aggravate and intrigue Pavel. His masculine pride, thoroughly accustomed to women throwing themselves at him at the slightest opportunity, struck an absolute calm. Week after week passed, but this modest provincial girl remained unbreachable. A strange, almost competitive thrill awoke within him: why was she — the only one in his entire circle — not trying to manipulate him, remaining entirely untroubled by his billions? Alina’s genuine indifference to his status worked better than any calculated seduction — it forced Pavel himself to seek out reasons to talk.

One such occasion arose during an ordinary working midday. Pavel caught Alina having a rushed bite to eat right at the reception desk. Noticing her boss, she self-consciously tried to hide the plastic container. Pavel said nothing, but half an hour later, he silently returned from the city and placed a brown kraft bag before her, containing a hot meal from a fast-food restaurant.

This spontaneous rendezvous at the reception desk, soundtracked by the quiet, rhythmic pinging of Telegram notifications, was filled with a raw sincerity that Pavel had never experienced in his life. Stepping right over his high-society pretension, they shared a warm, ironically sweet lunch, discussing the St. Petersburg sleet behind the panoramic glass pane. Pavel caught himself thinking that this simple burger brought him more pure pleasure than dinners in Michelin-starred establishments. He settled the bill with a single click via biometric delivery terminal, without even pulling out his phone, while Alina watched this routine triumph of digital technology with a soft smile.

Chapter 4. The “Silk Curls” Capsule

Alina continued to dismantle every single one of Pavel’s preconceptions, and one such defining moment unfolded on a rain-drenched Tuesday when a crucial representative from a London investment fund arrived at the headquarters completely unannounced. As fate would have it, Pavel’s staff interpreter was utterly marooned in a infamousSt. Petersburg traffic jam along the Obvodny Canal, leaving the top executives panicking and exchanging uneasy glances, completely at a loss for how to smooth over the agonizing silence. The foreign investor’s brow was already beginning to furrow, the discomfort in the room growing palpable.

Alina calmly rose from behind the reception desk. Without a trace of panic or hesitation, she stepped toward the guest and welcomed him on behalf of the conglomerate in a flawless, crystal-clear English accented with a soft British cadence. Within minutes, she effortlessly navigated a light, sophisticated small talk, offered the distinguished guest a premium coffee, escorted him into the boardroom, and coaxed a genuine smile from his lips with a witty remark about the St. Petersburg weather.

Pavel, who had been observing the entire sequence from behind the glass doors of his private office, froze in his tracks. His brows shot upward in sheer astonishment. This simple girl from the Avito listings wasn’t just brewing espresso — she possessed a razor-sharp, highly cultivated intellect capable of salvaging the international negotiations of his multi-billion-dollar empire. Long after the investor had stepped into the boardroom, Pavel remained staring at the closed door, feeling his interest in his own receptionist mutate into something intimidatingly profound.

This incident forced Pavel to view his headquarters through an entirely new lens. The corporate space, which had previously seemed like a sterile, mechanical clockwork, suddenly acquired a focal point. And that focal point was Alina. She continued to respect the boundaries of professional hierarchy flawlessly, yet Pavel caught himself more and more frequently tracking her shadow through the transparent glass partitions. Soon, he noticed a large cardboard box tucked beneath her desk, from which sketchbooks and premium art supplies were visibly protruding.

“A major inventory shipment, Alina?” Pavel inquired casually, pausing at the front desk. “Did our archives order this?”

Alina flushed slightly — marking the singular moment her mathematical composure sustained a temporary fracture. She neatly nudged the box deeper beneath the desk with the toe of her shoe:

“No, Pavel Andreyevich. It’s personal. This weekend I’m traveling to visit the children at Regional Orphanage No. 3. They asked for art supplies for their lessons. I help out once a month when time permits. Please don’t worry, it doesn’t interfere with my corporate duties in the slightest.”

“I’m not worried,” Pavel tossed back before retreating into his office.

Yet inside him, a violent emotional tempest was raging. Raised in a hyper-cynical high-society environment, he was thoroughly accustomed to “charity” engineered solely for public relations and polished social media grids. Alina, by contrast, sacrificed her rare, hard-won weekends quietly, entirely devoid of pretense or publications. Against the backdrop of the artificial brilliance that had circled him for years, she emerged as an authentic angel from a parallel universe. His defenses were crumbling, and the very hierarchy she maintained so strictly was transforming into the most coveted peak he was absolutely bound to conquer.

Behind her mask of absolute serenity, however, Alina was masking a brutal, accumulating exhaustion. Pavel increasingly noticed the dark shadows bruising the skin beneath her eyes and the way she was practically drifting off to sleep at the front desk. One evening, he summoned her into his private office. Resting upon the polished executive desk was a sleek, austere black box.

“This is corporate property, Alina,” Pavel stated in a dry, thoroughly businesslike tone, fighting to conceal the underlying tremor of his own anxiety. “I require my staff to operate at peak efficiency, not collapse from sheer fatigue. You will utilize this advanced software.”

Inside the box rested the latest AR augmented-reality glasses paired with a high-performance graphic tablet. Pavel explained that the integrated AI assistant would enable her to model and calculate pattern drafts directly in mid-air, translating three-dimensional formulas into ready-to-cut digital blueprints in a matter of seconds. Alina was deeply flushed by this veiled act of care masquerading as “operational necessity,” yet she accepted the hardware. This technological miracle granted her mathematical mind an incredible sovereignty: now, the monumental workload of forty-two individual gowns could be executed in just a single month.

Chapter 5. The Catalogue of Couture Flora: Absolute Femininity and Drama

Her relationship with Pavel was slowly yet irrevocably shifting its trajectory, and concurrently, Alina was descending deeper into his world — a world that was cold, blindingly brilliant, and intimidatingly alien. The first serious fracture ran through an exclusive, high-society reception to which Pavel had invited her, no longer as the receptionist of his conglomerate, but as his personal guest.

For Alina, this became a brutal trial. The evening, unfolding inside a palatial penthouse with panoramic views of the midnight Neva, greeted her from the very first moments with artificial smiles and calculating, predatory glances. The manicured high-society lionesses and Pavel’s long-standing acquaintances from the elite St. Petersburg fashion scene immediately flagged the modest provincial girl as an existential threat. A literal avalanche of inherited superiority pressed down upon her, but the true, devastating blow lay ahead.

On the eve of the reception, one of Pavel’s detractors, actively hunting for any scrap of leverage against his new companion, had stumbled upon a casual social media photograph posted by her friend Liza from the sewing workshop. Resting in the soft-focus background of the frame was a unique dress silhouette stamped with Alina’s signature mathematical drafting seal. Resolving to publicly test the knowledge of this “provincial upstart” and expose her as a fraud, a statuesque brunette clad in an oversized designer suit — which draped over her frame like an incredibly expensive sack — approached Alina, offering an venomous, saccharine smile as she extended a printed screenshot of the technical sketch: