Lauren
Lauren is an in-game character and tailor who manages the Icon store in Independence Port. She only interacts with heroes when they wish to expand their costume selections upon reaching security level 30.
History
Lauren was born in New York City, the daughter of a clothier. She got her start in Europe, working long and hard as a seamstress for various design houses, often in fear that her designs were being co-opted by the "big name talent". Finally she was given potential with The Icon, Incorporated and given an opportunity to work in their Milan store where she became an overnight success.
She was eventually promised her own store in Paragon City, but when her fellow Icon rival Serge heard of this, he pulled seniority to get the prestigeous Steel Canyon store, sending her to Independence Port. Still she continued to persevere and soon her store was rivalling Serge's in terms of repeat customers from the superhero community, mostly, though, becasue of her name.
Her last "great" fashion feat was designing the wedding gowns for the Wedding of Manticore and Sister Psyche in 2008. Little was said about how her designs managed to beat out the other two designers, though there were some rumors of backroom politics.
Personality
Lauren is somewhat jealous of the hero community, wishing she could be one herself. However she is happy where she is, as the undisputed "queen" of the city's tailors.
She considers Serge to be an effete snobbish boor. Her relationship with Carson could be best described on her part as wishful, but he sees her as being too old.
Her attention to detail, not to mention her rambling on endlessly of her glory years, sometimes causes her to overlook potential problems in other areas, as was evidenced when she spent too much time lecturing new transfer Kara Hamilton while ignoring a problem with a client's tech-based fitting which was slowly short-circuiting her nervous system. Thankfully Kara managed to remedy the problem and save Lauren from an embarassing situation.
In the past few years, though, Lauren had been coasting on her name and past glory years. Some have attributed her to being the boss from hell, nit-picking on their attire and pestering underlings to come up with ideas that she could then co-opt through the fine-print of their employment contracts.
Related Information
Lauren was seen in Issue #1 of the "Guardians of the Dawn Spotlight" series.
(See her Paragon Wiki entry for more information.)
