Irina Belotelkin

She lived with her husband in San Francisco, California. They were devoted to their dogs, Samoyeds, Dushenka and Dushenka Deux. She died at home on January 21, 2009, at the age of 96.

She painted portraits of several prominent San Franciscans. One portrait, a charcoal, of a young Gordon Getty, who'd frequented her studio as a young lad, remained in her personal collection for 3 decades. She presented it to Gordon at his 2005 birthday celebration.

One rare instance of foregoing her famed Easter parties was 1988 when she was preparing for her April 30, 1988, show at Mae Woo's William Gallery in St. Helena.

In later years her Easter party preparations and recipes were featured in several magazines. The March 1978 issue of Sphere ran a multi-page article entitled A Russian Feast. Irina is pictured, with the caption:

In 1965 she undertook private study with two prominent Russian painters, including Serge Ivanoff; she executed a portrait of her two masters. She cherished her portrait as executed by Serge Ivanoff.

In 1963 Irina was the Advisor for Fashion Lift, a tour of US Fashion Industry of European Couturiers.

The August 20, 1961, Saturday Evening Post describes her decade-long effort, as part of the San Francisco chapter of Fashion Group International (FGI), with Jane Winthrop, in the San Francisco Mental Health Fashion Therapy Program which aimed to give fashion therapy to the mentally ill. These activities involved the patients in both staging and presenting fashion, and in showing them how to dress fashionably. The doctors commented on the improvement of their patients. Irina introduced, in 1961, the blue print of Fashion Therapy to the Paris Fashion Group.

From the early 1960s through the late 1980s, Irina studied and prolifically created still life and portrait paintings in oil and water color, excelling in flower compositions. She held studio and feature exhibitions; she competed and won prizes. Her work is in holdings throughout the SFBay area.

Her 1955 Holiday Collection show at her Stockton studio featured 43 selections, one executed by Gellenghi, Florence, Italy. She later moved the atelier to 260 Sutter St.

Among other accomplishments, in 1953 she was invited to Milan, and designed the costumes for the La Scala production of Puccini's opera La Fanciulla del West.

Following fashion design school in New York City, and her move to San Francisco Irina opened, in 1945, her first studio-salon, as a millinery designer: EraBelle Hat Shop. For her shop's logo she used her fencing mask and a pair of foils.

Irina was a masterful hostess, a discipline developed through years of dedicated practice. Here is an early example (May 5, 1943, New York Times) of what became her typical pattern of combining high-entertainment and worthy causes:

Later she was awarded first prize, in foils, at the 1937 N.E. Women's Championship.

She was an avid, and ultimately champion, fencer. In one match, January 7, 1934, reported in the New York Times in which her brother, Paul Roudakoff, also competed, the New York Times reports: The Hartford Fencers Club women's team upset New York University's intercollegiate championship women's fencing unit, 10 to 6. Miss Irene (sic) Roudakoff, Hartford, in foils, defeated Miss Seiden, 5-4, Miss Suskin, 5-4, and Miss Mildred Atlas (substitute for Miss Hurwitz), 5-2. She lost to NYU's Miss Harriett Graver, 5-4.

Irina (her early transcription was Irene) lived with her brother in Hartford, Connecticut, attending post-graduate programs at Hartford Public High School in 1931. Her status as a visiting student was threatened when a spurned suitor reported her for working as an artist. She was returned to Ellis Island. Through the intercession of, and personal interview with, Fannie Perkins (then New York State's industrial commissioner and soon to become the first woman to serve as Secretary of Labor) Irina won a reprieve. Later, in a ceremony conducted by Chief Justice Hughes, she became a naturalized citizen. She studied voice, drama and opera. She finished fashion design school in New York City.

Among the rare quality images are those by renowned photographer David Lees (1918–2004), of Irina and Irina Roublon gowns and outfits in Florence, Italy, in the years 1951–1955.

Irina Roudakoff Belotelkin (January 1, 1913 – January 21, 2009) was a Russian-American artist and fashion designer.

After a year in Moscow, and appeals to the Estonian consul, Irina was aided in a dramatic escape from the Soviet Union, to her aunt Anna Blonsky Lassburg (1882–1940) and her husband Doctor Genrick Lassburg in Tallinn, Estonia. Eventually, after in 1929, traveling through Ellis Island and admitted as a student, of voice studies, she joined her brother who—having been located in Egypt by the efforts of the International Red Cross—had settled, in 1923, in the United States. She was reunited with her Aunt Lucy (Olga) and Grandmother Natalia Blonsky (who had arrived earlier, in 1923, to New York from Constantinople (now Istanbul)).