"No Lace!"

"No lace, Mrs. Bennet, I beg you!"

I blame this bit of fun on Rachel. A lot of my blogging fun can be blamed on Rachel. I don't know how she feels about that. I dare say in a year or two she'll have got over it tolerably. For her story The Scarlet-Gypsy Song she charted out clothing styles, as her story is a fantasy set in another world. I know that makes it sound terribly cliche, but her story has a lovely quirk and twist to it which gives it a fresh dimension. Abigail did this sort of post likewise in "Let Us Be Elegant or Die," and while I am pretty poor sport at coming up with original clothing, I thought I, too, might regale you with the trendy fashions of Plenilune. My post from last August, "What a Deal of Starch!", gives you a peek into my general views on clothing. Now I want to be specific and (Megan) alleviate a tiny bit of the mystery that seems to surround Plenilune.

The woman sat foremost among those in the orchestra, and in her pomp and quiet, smothering splendour, Margaret knew she was only gracing their company: she belonged among the lords and ladies. Her hair was caught up with pins of blue amber—which the light behind her was making into a furious cluster of fractalled flame—but if it had been let down it would have been long and tawny-striped like honey and a tiger's coat, and Margaret almost hated her for the beauty of it. She was in a gown of peacock-blue, the same colour as the drenched night blue outside the windows, and her gown was chased over and over very heavily by gold threads, as if the golden harp-strings of her instrument were tied to her, and she to it—and when she glanced up across the audience from attending to her harp and the light of the chandeliers illumined the look in her eyes, Margaret was certain of it.
Plenilune

Throughout the different Honours of Plenilune and the varying tastes of peoples and individuals, there is one common element. The society of Plenilune likes to put on a show. They breathe heavily with pomp and splendour, colour, jewels, metals. They like to look good. Even FitzDraco of Orzelon-gang, whose most lavish colour is a hunter green, sports a heavy ring with an equally heavy aquamarine stone which (legend has it, and he has not stirred himself to debunk the legend) will turn hot-white when the wearer is righteous in fury. Even those who wear black as a habit (and there are a few), they have a way of wearing black as if they wore the very void of the universe. No matter what they wear, they wear it with style.

They like velvet. Nothing purrs quite like velvet. It can be light or heavy, solid or printed, and it has just the amount of easy pretension the Plenilune elite like to wear. This is ideal for late autumn, winter, and early spring, of course, but you can wear it in the warmer months if it is handled delicately. Furs too, furs are a splendid accessory - horsehair and fawnskin are very light and typically worn by the ladies, panther-skins are very rare and greatly admired. You are not likely to find any English floral prints in the crowd: Plenilune prints tend to be heavily organic, particularly those influenced by the nomadic antipodes, which take embroidery and brocade to a whole new level of intricate. They are almost alarmingly lackadaisical about where normal people put gems and will set them in almost anything, so long as the setting is grand enough for the jewel. Their love of bold colours is rivalled only by the nomadic peoples, who don't believe in darkening or muting and aren't the best judges of which colours ought to go together, and which oughtn't. Plenilune society may love its overwhelming show, but it is always classy about it.

And throw in some feathers! - in a lady's hair, on a lady's dress, on a masque, on the cord of a doublet-tie - make a peacock jealous! Swan, grouse, pheasant, raven, blue-jay, cardinal - anything with a plumage to show will be plucked and wind up sported at a Plenilune social gathering. Conversely, they may be particular about their cloths, but they aren't selective about their gems. If it cuts well and throws a good shine, they don't mind if it is "precious" or not.

This is all very minute. In general Plenilune style could be described as medieval hurled very hard at Victorian, and Victorian coming out the worse for it. You will not spot pantaloons anywhere (thank goodness), but trousers, though you will find variations of the doublet used with extreme flippancy. Dresses tend to be close-fitting and layered under the skirts; necklines vary with taste. Buttoned coats are not uncommon, especially among hunting paraphernalia. Hats are, however, almost unheard-of. Hoods are used for inclement weather and a woman might wrap a light shawl over her head, but it is a mark of dignity (among those who care to think about it this deeply) to go about bare-headed. And something they all wear, which cannot be cut out of stone or cloth, is that sense of dignity, of potency, of splendour and the splendour of humanity of which their heavy embroidery and rich clothing are only the bare fringes.

When I said it was like a crazy tapestry of colour and action, I was not joking. It is a giddy business, trying to write all this, and not unlike inducing a constant fever in my brain and vision. What a people to be hurled among after living twenty years in anemic, industrial, Victorian England!

She could not remember England very well, though that might have been only because her vision was running riot with whirling colours, peacocks' feathers, light, movement, and music. All she could remember was a broken sense of hoary discontentment, a sense of living drudgery, of fighting against small, insignificant shadows of things—when here in Plenilune lived and walked the sharp-edged real things of a higher plane: the gods and demons in their palaces, dancing together on the eve of winter.
Plenilune