St. Peter In Chains: The Collection. [OPEN!]

[meanwhileback]

Who: Penelope Lane, her models, her muses, her admirers, the curious and the critics. ANYONE. EVERYONE. GET IN HERE!!
What: Penelope's long-awaited runway show! Finally!
Where: St. Peter In Chains, abandoned cathedralish church.
When: Friday, June 29th! Eveningtime. Show starts at 7pm and goes... well. Until everyone isn't there anymore, I guess!! For whatever reason.
Notes: IMPORTANT: There's going to be a bunch of subthreads for different parts of the night. Feel free to tag around in them as you want! I'd like fabulous things to happen here, people. Fabulous. Things.
EDIT: NOW WITH ADDED TERROR!! SEE LINK BELOW!!
Warnings: Scary things, NPC death, injuries... horrors!!

The venue has been done up quite well for the occasion, all things considered. The old pews that were still salvageable have been repurposed and rearranged to face the aisle down the center of the enormous main room, where a raised runway has been set up. Lighting and temporary walls, and even an audio system have been brought in and installed for the occasion, and the impressive wreathed columns have been dramatically lit from below to emphasize the height of the room.

All told, it looks like it cost absolute scads of money to renovate an abandoned space to this level of elegance; whether this is actually true or not is largely immaterial. As with so much of society, it's the appearance of the thing that matters most, not the reality of it. Perhaps that's a statement Penelope Lane is making intentionally. Everyone knows the designer is one of the most outspoken members of her cohort, after all, and not one to misrepresent herself.

And she is, tonight, for one, brief, shining moment, entirely in control. Take plenty of pictures; it won't last long.

AND NOW: THE REAL SHOW BEGINS

Comments

[rhinemaid]

I really liked the show. But that's not a surprise. She's wearing something Penelope made for her to it, and Penelope's couture makes up a fairly significant part of her wardrobe - there's a reason she was sitting in the front row, and that's mainly because Ilde is halfway between 'muse' and 'Penelope's own life-size self-portrait Barbie'. Were you nervous? I'd be nervous.

Photography - which he may recall her having absolutely no trouble with - is one thing.

[gramarye]

"Um." He could lie, but then he'd feel bad. Also, Ilde has known him for longer than twelve seconds, so she'd see right through it anyway. Yes. But it isn't — wasn't — so bad. Too many lights, could barely see anything. That's true, it had helped a lot to not have to look at anyone else's face.

He nods, indicating her dress. Is that one of hers?

[rhinemaid]

Ilde decides, at the very last minute with an aborted finger-twitch that would have been an ill-advised bit of speculation, that it wouldn't be at all helpful to wax poetic about how alarming she'd find it to be aware of how many people must be watching and unable to see them for herself. If Penelope wants him to walk for her again, she's not going to be the one who gives him something to chew over until he can't get up there another time.

So. Instead: It is! She had a bit of say about what I wore tonight. A while in advance, though-- you know how busy she's been. In the lead up, with everything that's going into the show.

[gramarye]

It's really for the best that nobody remind him how many people are staring at him at any given moment. At least here, he can hide behind someone else.

Oh, I like it, it's pretty. Then a pause, and his face is like... yep. Yep, he knows. He really can't complain about any of this considering she's paying him ridiculous amounts of money to wear clothes and walk, skills he mastered at about the age of two, so. It pays off, yeah? This, he gestures around them, is amazing kind of.

[rhinemaid]

Ilde almost laughs, not unkindly, at the expression on his face; she at least is disinclined to look down on him for just about anything, though admittedly if she wanted to try something like that she'd need a fucking ladder.

I do love being here. It's odd, though, isn't it? Our cohort feels so small, and. Now it doesn't. Because it isn't just their cohort participating tonight - they feel sometimes like an island in the city, and it's an interesting reminder that they aren't. Odd context. Maybe the perfect sort of context, Ilde doesn't know.

[gramarye]

I don't mind it being small — Wryly self-aware. If anything, at least it means whenever they're prompted to gather together in one space, be it by the gods or something else, it means it's not quite so overwhelming as this. It does feel... weird? He's not sure how else to word the vague discomfort he has lately with this separation between the cohort and the rest of the city.

It's something that he thinks about a lot when he's high.

That doesn't help.

[rhinemaid]

We aren't an island, she signs, and she thinks she prefers that; her day to day life involves more than just the people who can easily reach her on their cohort network, and sometimes it's odd how they all seem to withdraw together. Not everyone here is even interested in being a part of the city, and for the most part Ilde understands that, doesn't judge it, but she is. She wants to be, she doesn't see a life for herself outside of it any more, and there's something comforting about feeling a little more smoothly connected.

It's one of the reasons she liked Penelope's introduction and concept for the show so much.

[gramarye]

It's a nice reminder.

And he's not actually sure how he feels about it, the politics of this city. The people who want to be here, the people who don't, and the reasons why people become one or the other.

Mostly it makes him feel cynical.

And no one can complain because they don't have to come. Emphasis on the 'have to', but more amused than anything. He's noticed god-inspired events tend to inspire irritation more than the celebratory tone of tonight's party. (He'd be one of those, that's why.)

[rhinemaid]

Something about this is natural in a way that those events lack; it's difficult to feel friendly under the implicit threat of a right smiting if you aren't, and the obligation so often seems to result in a group of people inclined to get in and out as smoothly as they can. Maybe not everyone here this evening is here because they want to be, but moreso than other times.

Ilde is pleased to be here, which isn't even true of all the parties she attends without obligation.

If we did have to be a little island, who would you be on it with? I'd have trouble deciding. Personality clashes. That's the politest way of saying 'most of my friends are arseholes'.

[gramarye]

"Oh dear." He has to pause to think about this. From here, or in general? He could go on for hours about which historical figures he would like to be trapped on an island with, but — no, he's not going to start nerding out. And from Baedal, well. He likes most of the cohort, but even his friends outside of it are largely not, actually, his friends. He's always holding people at arm's length.

And no one he knows has a namesign except the one they made up for Penelope, which is. Not polite, to say the least.

I think I'd pick five strangers and hope for a Gilligan's Island.