Siberian native becomes a Yarmouth entrepreneur

By Lisa Chmelecki, Falmouth Forcaster

Svetlana Bell, owner of Svetlana Tailoring & Design, may never forget the first customer who visited her Main Street shop here. She was a local woman, looking for a new jacket.

Bell went to work, carefully designing a beautiful piece of clothing that she would be able to deliver with pride. But when the woman tried the jacket on, Bell shrank with embarrassment when both she and her customer discovered simultaneously that one sleeve was slightly shorter than the other.

A native of Siberia, Bell instantly knew what she had done wrong. She measured one sleeve-in inches and the other in centimeters.

Although she was able to fix the jacket immediately, Bell is just now allowing herself to look back and laugh at what was certainly an understandable mistake.

After all, Bell, 43, spent most of her career as a seamstress making dresses for women in Siberia where she grew up in a small village of 700 people. Converting metric measurements to feet and inches is one of several obstacles she now faces as an American entrepreneur.

She is learning a new language, a new culture, an entirely new way of life - a life in which she doesn't have to travel back and forth to a well for water or spend hours hacking a huge tree into fire wood to warm her house.

Bell, a small, delicate woman who uses her hands when she speaks · and giggles quietly after saying an American word or phrase, left Siberia four years ago and moved to Anchorage, Alaska, with her husband, Tom.

The couple met during a New Year's celebration in Siberia in 1993. Tom Bell, who had been working as a reporter for a daily newspaper in Anchorage, traveled to Russia's far east to cover a story on the logging of the forests there.

He and Svetlana, whose maiden name was Lesnekova, stayed in Siberia for s<;>me time before moving across the border to Alaska. While there, they ran a business importing birch bark baskets. Svetlana Bell, however, wasn't happy in Anchorage.

For one, she missed the tall, green trees that surrounded her home in Krasny Yar, which is located along Russia's Amur River and has a four-season climate. Alaska was too dark for trees - and too cold for dresses.

Bell, who learned the art of sewing from her mother, longed to make women's clothing again. In Alaska, she put her skills to work making wing covers for airplanes.

In search of a climate similar to Krasny Yar's, the Bells eventually left Alaska and arrived in Maine this past June. They found an ideal home in the center of Yarmouth's downtown village, where Bell was thrilled to discover she wouldn't need a car to do her daily errands. She could walk from store to store as she was accustomed to doing in Siberia.

Tom Bell got a job working for the Portland Press Herald, and his wife decided she was ready to follow her dreams and start a business of her own.

Svetlana Tailoring & Design, which she operates out of the family's brick Main Street home, opened its doors in October.

Although the business is the first Bell can call her own, it isn't the first that she has run independently. She also· operated a dress-making shop from her home in Siberia, but it was owned by the country's Communist administration. Bell would send the government all of her profits, and it would return about 8 percent to her as a salary.

During a recent interview with The Forecaster, Bell talked about what it is like to finally have a place of her own - to truly be her own boss. Although she speaks English well, she often turned to her husband, who speaks fluent Russian, for help in expressing her thoughts.

"Because this is hers, she feels great pride and responsibility," Tom Bell translated for his wife, who sat beside him · dressed in one of her own designs, a simple green dress decorated with intricate embroidered patterns. "She knows if she works hard, her business will succeed."

Besides going out of her way to make her customers feel comfortable in her studio, Bell sometimes works all day and all night to complete each order within 24 hours.

"I would like people to be happy that I could help them quickly," she said, explaining that she's mainly been busy with tailoring jobs but she hopes, in time, customers also will express interest in her clothing as well.

A simple sign in front of the house invites customers into the family's home, which is decorated with drawings of Bell's native people, a group of indigenous Asians called Nanai. A photograph of Bell catching a gigantic salmon joins these drawings on a wall in her studio.

"I love fish," Bell said in a soft, cautious voice. "I mean, I like to catch fish, but not eat it too much."

Some customers may get the privilege of being greeted by Tom and Svetlana' s 3-year-old daughter Ihila. Dressed in pink footie pajamas. Ihila, whose name means "Golden" in the Nanai language, helped her parents show off her mom's new venture.

Presently, Bell works from one room in the back of the house, but she is in the process of expanding into two adjacent rooms that are still under renovation. She is doing most of the remodeling herself.

"I came home the other day and Svetlana told me that she did something with the wall," recalled Tom BelL "I thought she took down the wallpaper, but she knocked down the entire wall."

Once the two rooms are complete, Bell wants to fill them with mannequins that show off a variety of her work. She also plans to make sure the studio is warm and cozy. She realizes that, in America, she has to give customers a reason to come to · her shop rather than to a larger business or chain store.

In Siberia, this was never a worry. Krasny Yar could only be reached by boat and the closest city was more than a four-hour bus ride away.

Although Bell is happy to finally be in a place like Maine - a place, she explained, where she can look up in the sky and see the same stars as in Siberia - she admitted the transition has been hard at times.

"Sometimes, I feel so ... alone," she said, looking to her husband to make sure she explained her feeling correctly. "Sometimes, the only communication I have is through my work."

Bell described her customers, most of whom discovered her through word of mouth, as peaceful and calm.

"And they help with my English," she added.

Since she's opened Svetlana Tailoring · & Design, Bell has learned that "making something from scratch" has nothing to do with an itch. She's also become familiar with the phrase, "What do you charge?" The first time a customer posed this question to her, Bell responded by giving directions to a nearby church.