Celestine Veyra
Character
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
Tall and lithe, Celestine Veyra possesses the sort of appearance that once made her a natural fit for the fashion industry's other side of the runway. Long strawberry-blonde hair, crystal-blue eyes, fair skin and elegant features give her an immediately recognizable appearance, though years spent around professional models taught her precisely how much appearance can be manufactured.
Celestine rarely dresses casually by anyone else's definition of the word. She is almost always wearing something of her own design, ranging from relatively restrained luxury clothing to experimental couture pieces that would be difficult to mistake for anyone else's work. Her tastes favor flowing silhouettes, intricate metallic accents, unusual fabrics and carefully considered flashes of color.
Her accessories receive nearly as much attention as her clothing. Jewelry, handbags, shoes and even luggage are selected as parts of a complete composition rather than afterthoughts.
INVENTORY
- Personal wardrobe of Veyra Haute Couture designs
- Veyra-branded handbags, luggage and accessories
- Portable designer's sketchpad and stylus
- Holographic design interface
- Professional tailoring and measurement equipment
- Extensive collection of fabric and material samples
- Personal datapad and encrypted business communicator
- Luxury jewelry and accessories
- Personal funds and business accounts
PERSONALITY AND BELIEFS
Celestine Veyra is charming, fashionable, confident and, if one is being charitable, somewhat lacking in intellectual depth.
That isn't to say she's stupid. Celestine possesses an exceptional creative instinct and can discuss fabrics, tailoring, color theory and the minutiae of garment construction with startling expertise. Unfortunately, once the conversation wanders outside fashion, celebrity gossip, parties, luxury goods or whichever attractive person has most recently caught her attention, there is a very real possibility that her eyes will begin to glaze over.
Celestine likes pretty things.
She likes pretty clothes. She likes pretty buildings. She likes pretty ships. She likes pretty people. She particularly likes pretty things that are expensive, exclusive or—preferably—both. She is perfectly capable of appreciating deeper meaning when someone puts it directly in front of her, but rarely goes looking for it herself.
Fashion occupies an enormous portion of her mental landscape. Celestine genuinely believes that what someone wears matters, though her reasoning is often considerably less philosophical than she makes it sound. Clothing can communicate culture, status and identity, certainly. More importantly, however, an ugly dress is still an ugly dress, and Celestine considers allowing someone to attend an important function wearing one to be practically an act of cruelty.
She is social, flirtatious and fond of gossip without generally being malicious about it. Celestine enjoys knowing who is sleeping with whom, who embarrassed themselves at which party, whose marriage is collapsing, and precisely which aristocrat is pretending that last season's gown is actually new. Secrets involving military deployments or galactic politics may escape her attention entirely. Someone secretly dating their bodyguard will have her complete concentration.
Her vanity is considerable. Years spent modeling left Celestine acutely aware of her own appearance, and leaving the profession did little to diminish that awareness. She enjoys compliments, likes being recognized and will absolutely notice when someone fails to recognize her. She can spend twenty minutes deciding between two nearly identical pairs of shoes and then become genuinely confused when informed that everyone else was ready nineteen minutes ago.
Celestine is nevertheless warmer than her superficiality initially suggests. Her experience as a young model left her with little patience for designers who mistreat the people working for them. She remembers being the person standing motionless while someone complained about how fabric sat across her body. Models working for Veyra are expected to be professionals, but they are also expected to be treated like people.
She has a similar attitude toward her clients. Celestine does not particularly care whether someone fits conventional standards of beauty. Give her an unusual body, difficult proportions or the anatomy of a species she has never dressed before and she becomes fascinated rather than judgmental. Everyone, in Celestine's estimation, deserves the opportunity to look fabulous.
Her relationship with Kuat is considerably more complicated. Years away have weakened some of the assumptions she grew up with without entirely removing them. Celestine still appreciates Kuati refinement, craftsmanship and status, even if she now recognizes that the galaxy contains considerably more interesting things than Kuat ever taught her about.
She just wishes considerably more of those interesting things knew how to coordinate their accessories.
STRENGTHS
Designer — Celestine possesses an exceptional eye for silhouette, color, material and presentation. She can look at a client and quickly begin imagining clothing designed specifically around their appearance, personality and circumstances.
Industry Veteran — Having worked both in front of and behind the holocamera, Celestine understands the fashion industry unusually well. She knows modeling, production, marketing, luxury branding and the politics surrounding wealthy clientele.
Social Chameleon — Fashion has taken Celestine everywhere from workshops to aristocratic receptions. She is comfortable dealing with models, craftspeople, celebrities, executives and nobility, and knows how to adjust her presentation without surrendering her own identity.
Galactic Perspective — Years spent away from Kuat exposed Celestine to species, cultures and lifestyles she never would have encountered had she remained home. Her collections increasingly reflect that diversity rather than simply adapting Human fashion to alien customers.
WEAKNESSES
Perfectionist — "Good enough" is one of Celestine's least favorite phrases. She can waste considerable time and resources correcting details almost nobody else would notice.
Civilian — Celestine is a fashion designer, not a soldier, mercenary or Jedi. Galactic instability has made her accustomed to security precautions, but if blasters come out she would strongly prefer somebody qualified to stand between her and them.
Expensive Taste — Celestine has spent years surrounded by luxury and has become thoroughly accustomed to it. She can survive without it. She would simply prefer not to test that proposition.
Vain — Celestine is extremely conscious of appearances, particularly her own. Compliments work embarrassingly well on her, criticism can ruin her mood, and there are situations in which she will devote substantially more thought to what she should wear to a crisis than to the crisis itself.
HISTORY
Celestine Veyra was born on Kuat, a world where aesthetics and engineering were rarely as far removed from one another as outsiders sometimes imagined. Kuat was famous for starships rather than dresses, but the same cultural admiration for precision, pedigree and immaculate presentation extended well beyond its shipyards.
Celestine discovered fashion from the outside first.
Tall, slender and photogenic, she began modeling professionally while still in her teens. What initially seemed glamorous quickly became less appealing once it became ordinary work. Celestine enjoyed the clothing, the artistry and the transformations involved in a show, but she cared considerably less for the actual modeling scene. She disliked surrendering control over her appearance to somebody else's vision and found herself increasingly interested in what happened before a garment ever reached her.
She started asking questions.
Why had a designer chosen that fabric? Why did one silhouette work when another did not? Why was an otherwise beautiful piece ruined by its neckline? Why couldn't something be altered differently?
Eventually, Celestine stopped merely asking.
She began sketching alternatives between fittings and quietly modifying inexpensive pieces of her own clothing. One of the designers she regularly modeled for noticed. Rather than being offended by a teenage model redesigning professional work in the margins of her sketchpad, the designer recognized that Celestine possessed a remarkably good eye.
They offered her an apprenticeship.
Celestine eventually abandoned modeling as a career and crossed permanently to the other side of the fitting room. Her experience as a model proved invaluable. She understood how clothing actually felt after hours of wear, how fabric moved beneath lights, how seemingly insignificant construction choices could make a model miserable, and how differently garments behaved on a living person compared with a design projection.
The apprenticeship became a career of her own.
Celestine left Kuat and spent years traveling through the galaxy's fashion centers, gradually developing a reputation under her own name. Exposure to alien cultures transformed her approach. Rather than simply producing Human couture with holes, alterations or accessories added for other species, she became fascinated with designing clothing around radically different bodies and cultural expectations from the beginning.
That philosophy eventually became central to Veyra Haute Couture.
Celestine's work expanded beyond formal gowns into luxury streetwear, resort fashion, intimate apparel, accessories and more experimental collections. Among the most unusual is her current pet project; Veyra Aetherworks, an elaborate fusion of antique industrial aesthetics, precision mechanisms and modern galactic technology that turns gears, brasswork, crystals and miniature machinery into elements of haute couture.
Success kept Celestine moving.
For a long time, there was always another commission, another collection and another world offering opportunities more interesting than returning to the one she had left behind. She maintained her Kuati identity without actually living on Kuat, and gradually "home" became somewhere remembered rather than somewhere she expected to be.
Celestine has now been away from Kuat for years.
The galaxy she returns through is not the galaxy she left, and Kuat itself has hardly remained untouched in her absence. Celestine may have built Veyra far beyond her homeworld, but returning forces her to confront an uncomfortable question:
After spending so long designing herself into someone new, how much of the Kuati girl who first stepped onto a runway is actually coming home?