[cisfemale, she/her] Welcome to Aurora Bay, [IRIS ALDERIDGE]! I couldn’t help but notice you look an awful lot like [ADELAIDE KANE]. You must be the [THIRTY-FOUR] year old [OWNER OF FLORA AND FAUNA]. Word is you’re [HEADSTRONG] but can also be a bit [RESENTFUL] and your favorite song is [MY BOY ONLY BREAKS HIS FAVORITE TOYS - TAYLOR SWIFT]. I also heard you’ll be staying in [CRYSTAL COVE CONDOS]. I’m sure you’ll love it!
tw: teen pregnancy, tw: abortion mention (doesn't happen)
@aurorabayaesthetic
Iris' life, in her opinion, is always summed up in two segments: before and after. After was pretty good. After everything, she went to fashion school, got her degree, she moved to New York and worked her way up from assisting in fashion shows and dressing shoddy off off off Broadway shows, to being highlighted during Fashion Week. In the After, she had a swanky apartment on the Upper East Side that overlooked Central Park. In the After, Iris Aldridge was considered one of the best up and coming designers with her own little shop after spending years just doing little pop ups, noted for her designs that mixed contemporary with the classics, blending what was great with what will be. All in all, her life was one to be envied.
The Iris of Before however, was a different girl indeed.
Born to Ava Wells and Ian Alderidge, she grew up in a modest mansion on Aurora Bay Drive with the ocean as her backyard. Her mother owned a quaint little flower shop in town while her father was a banker with decades of generational wealth behind him. From childhood, Iris' life was highlighted by the best. She had the best toys, the best tutors, and, of course, the best clothes. She had friends whom she loved, grew up by the beach, and as she was just 16 in high school, she met who she thought was going to be the absolute love of her life. Arkin O'Connell was nothing like she'd ever experienced and he entered into her life like a wrecking ball. He didn't have money, he had a reputation, and Iris fell so head over heels for him that she could hardly think straight.
This was, of course, just not acceptable by her parents. And Iris being a teenager and in live, just didn't care.
She and Arkin made whispered promises to always love each other, to run away together. They'd make their own life away from Aurora Bay and their families and they'd be happy together forever.
So when things started to unravel, Iris tried not to let it rattle her. The whispers of him cheating on her, that he was using her for money, it all rang in her ears but she tried desperately to ignore it as she and Arkin agreed to just leave. So one day when she got a letter from him, unceremoniously breaking up with her because she was too much for him and he was tired of feeling like he was second class to her, it absolutely destroyed her. She loved him, was ready to spend her entire life with him. She was was only seventeen but wanted to marry him.... And yet..
He was gone, left without her, before she even really knew what happened. And in the weeks after as she tried to pick up her shattered pieces, more unraveled: she was pregnant.
Her mother urged her to think of her options, offering to drive her to a clinic even and just be done with it, and while Iris did actually consider it, she knew she couldn't go through with it. And so she finished her senior year and then it was agreed that Iris would go live with an aunt up north in Sonoma to ride out her pregnancy, away from the public eye. About eight months later her daughter, whom she named Olivia, was born. She was beautiful and perfect and Iris loved her, but...she was still just a kid herself, and without Arkin around (or even knowing), Iris didn't want to do it alone. So she found a nice couple to adopt her baby and forced herself to say goodbye.
And then came the After. After she met Arkin O'Connell and had him rip her heart to shreds. After getting pregnant and having her baby. After putting her daughter up for adoption, never to see or hear from her again. Iris couldn't stand the shadows and the whispers that lurked in Aurora Bay, and she just needed to get away from California altogether, so when it came time for school, Iris applied all over the East Coast and got into FIT. She moved around her eighteenth birthday and hasn't been back since.
Until now anyways.
Now, Iris is 33 (her daughter, somewhere out there, is 16) and she owns her own boutique shop, Alderidge, in Manhattan. Or did. Because over the summer her mother passed away from a sudden heart attack, and in her will, Ava left Iris the deed to her beloved flower shop in back home in California. Iris seriously considered selling it, not wanting to come back, but...it was practically her mother's dying wish. So, reluctantly, Iris shuttered her brick and mortar shop, sold her high-rise apartment, and is back in Aurora Bay after more than a decade, unaware that the ghosts of her past, one in particular, are waiting in the wings.
extras:
full name: iris aurelia alderidge
birthday: July 23, 1991 (olivia is december 20, 2008)
height: 5'4
nicknames: riss, rissy
has a tattoo of an olive branch by her inner left elbow
she had an emergency c-section so she has the scar she always keeps covered. queen of high-waisted clothing
moved to New York in June of 2009. Attended FIT from Sept. 2009 to June 2013
did NYC fashion week 2019 thru 2024 spring and winter collections
Opened her boutique Alderidge in 2021 but closed it end of 2024 when she moved. is planning to sell online
connections:
Arkin O'Connell - ex-boyfriend/ father of her daughter ( @arkin-oconnell )
Olivia 'Alderidge' - her daughter/ NPC
Buddy Wells - cousin ( @buddywellls )
Delilah Carreño - cousin ( @delilahcarreno )
Ramsey Rivera - New York friend {Fashion} ( @missxrivera )
