In less than a week they would walk Maine’s biggest runway, but on Sunday morning, the women are in no hurry to get dressed.

Chatter comes from every room in the rambling Falmouth home, drowning out the steady drum of rain against the windows. Gauzy dresses vie for space on a clothing rack. For every woman wearing knee-high heels or cowboy boots, there are another five in socks.

A gray-haired woman, already in her pink Marilyn Monroe dress, tries on a blond wig and laughs at her lopsided reflection. She keeps it on anyway. Although 69-year-old Meredith Strang Burgess doesn’t know everyone in the room, she has nothing to hide.

She probably has the same scars as the youngest woman there.

“Once you’ve had breast cancer, and you don’t have any boobs anymore, it’s like: ‘Hell’s bells,'” Strang Burgess laughed. “We meet other gals and we all run into the girls’ room and go: ‘Oh my god, you’ve got to see the nipple I just got.'”

Breast cancer survivors from across Maine will model costumes Saturday at the fourth annual Runway for Hope, a fundraising fashion show at the Holiday Inn By the Bay in Portland. Organized by the New England Breast Cancer Alliance, the models, volunteers and sponsors have raised more than $100,000 this year for breast cancer research and support for families.

Before their debut at the “movie magic”-themed event, the 42 models are invited to meetups like the one in Falmouth. They spend hours mingling, practicing poses and trying on their costumes, often hand-sewn by a friend or family member credited as their designer.

Lifelong friendships tend to start here, in someone’s kitchen. Wearing socks.

Margaret Paisley, of Portland, is in the quieter bathroom upstairs, trying on her Grease-inspired costume. The 60-year-old has struggled with shoulder movement since having surgery, so another model, Kristin LaPlante, helps her shimmy into the black leather “Sandy” vest. It was designed by Paisley’s 26-year-old daughter.

Paisley isn’t sure if she’s more excited for her costume or for the leather T-birds jackets and boots her children will wear in the audience.

Her mother died from breast cancer at age 45. At that age, Paisley tested positive for the same genetic mutation that increases risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer. She didn’t tell her kids about her double mastectomy and full hysterectomy until they were adults.

Now, they dress up with her every year.

“A lot of it is for them in the audience, to hear the other model’s stories, and hear how hard it can be,” Paisley said. “And I guess to show them how to conquer it. How to be a strong person through all of this.”

WALKING THROUGH THE PAIN

Marisa Dolan Paraschak, 40, started Runway for Hope in 2022 with a dream of building a joyful space for survivors. She had support from other board members in the New England Breast Cancer Alliance, but coming out of the pandemic, she wondered if she would have to pull people off the street to fill the seats facing the hand-taped runway.

The show sold out in presale that year, and every year since. The number of ticket holders, models and volunteers continues to grow. Once people get involved with Runway for Hope, they don’t tend to stop.

Though some don’t have a choice. Three models and a volunteer died from breast cancer in the last year. Michelle Gaghan, a board member and survivor, will give Runway for Hope’s first ever remembrance speech in their honor.

Gaghan met one of the models shortly before last year’s show. She was uncomfortable with the costume her designer had created and on the verge of dropping out. Gaghan asked her sister, a seamstress, to build her a new costume from scratch.

Her speech will highlight the strength and confidence the model exuded that night.

“The Runway for Hope show just brings people together,” Gaghan said. “People that don’t go through what a breast cancer survivor has gone through, you just don’t understand the magnitude of it.”

There are models with short hair and long hair, in wigs and bandanas. Some have scars on flat chests. Others bond over a shared reconstruction surgeon. As the Falmouth group circles up in the kitchen to go over day-of logistics, a few women pull up chairs.

LaPlante, a second-time model, stands in the back with her dark hair in a ponytail. It would be hard to guess that two years ago there were cancer cells all over her body, metastasized more than a decade after her fight with breast cancer. Medication has shrunken the cancer in her hip, femur and spine, but LaPlante also pours hours into strength training, so she doesn’t break a bone if she falls.

On the runway, she gets to feel strong, too.

‘FIXING EACH OTHER’

LaPlante’s goal last year was to walk the runway without the cane she had relied on for months after treatment. Not only did she achieve that, but she and her designer won first place for their candy-themed costume, which included a flowing cape and hooped skirt with skittles that she revealed layer by layer on stage.

She saw the cane sitting in the basement the other day, all pink and glittery courtesy of her mother. “Nope,” she told it. “Not today. I’m done with you.”

But LaPlante said she couldn’t have gotten through the show without the other models. She met most of them the day of the event while waiting in lines: hair, glam, dress rehearsal, backstage. The model behind her needed help reattaching the colorful balls that were falling off her costume.

“We kept fixing each other,” she said.

She clapped along Sunday as the other models practiced their walks to music. AJ Lygo, a fashion designer from Portland who runs the backstage, was there to give advice and count out beats. He refers to himself as the last face you see before you walk the runway.

He makes sure it’s a happy one.

“These women are having to fight their bodies,” Lygo said. “Being able to give them a space and a place where we can show them themselves again, and they can have fun, and they can play dress-up: It is the greatest gift.”

He’s also the first face models see after they walk, standing by the stairs in case they need help walking down.

On Sunday, the rain has slowed in Falmouth. Strang Burgess takes off the lopsided wig. She and her designer will figure something out before the show. It’s taken years for her to agree to walk the runway, but now that she’s turning 70, all she wants to do is celebrate her survival.

She knows just the people to share it with.