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Etienne

Real Name	Sheldon Simplestein
Occupation	Fashion Designer and Costume Engineer
Status	Active
Era	Modern Age
MTAS Rating	Unrated
First Appearance	THE NIGHT SHIFT #34
Creators	Frank Carroll and Ed Messina

“Style is not vanity. In my profession, it is evidence that one has survived beautifully.”
— Etienne

Background

Born Sheldon Simplestein, the man who would eventually become known worldwide as Etienne spent much of his youth overlooked, bullied, and underestimated. A timid and awkward student at the New York High School of Science, Sheldon escaped into dreams of a brighter future, filling his notebooks with sketches of futuristic clothing, impossible fabrics, and elegant heroic costumes.

After graduating from art school, he reinvented himself under the name Etienne and entered the fashion world with a bold new vision. His designs combined cutting-edge aesthetics with advanced engineering principles, blending beauty, functionality, and speculative technology into garments unlike anything the world had seen before.

Etienne’s futuristic fashion lines became an international sensation and made him enormously wealthy.

His first connection to the superhero community came when he finally gathered the courage to approach Gauntlet with a proposed redesign for the hero’s costume. Gauntlet surprisingly accepted the design, resulting in the hero’s infamous yellow-and-black costume period.

Etienne’s true breakthrough within the superhuman world came later, when he designed the costumes for the second incarnation of The Guardians. From that point onward, he became the premier costume designer for superheroes across the globe.

Among the many heroes who have worn Etienne creations are Mistral and numerous other high-profile superhumans.

Etienne categorically refuses to design costumes for supervillains.

Skills And Philosophy

Etienne is considered one of the world’s greatest fashion designers and costume engineers. His work incorporates advanced knowledge of materials science, engineering, aerodynamics, environmental protection systems, and wearable technology.

Unlike ordinary fashion designers, Etienne fully understands the practical realities faced by superheroes. His costumes are designed not merely to look impressive, but to survive high-speed flight, energy discharges, dimensional travel, underwater operations, and superhuman combat.

He is brilliant, temperamental, perfectionistic, and famously intolerant of stupidity.

Etienne summarizes his philosophy with the declaration:

"I design for GODS!"

Personality

Although flamboyant and dramatic in public, Etienne remains deeply shaped by the insecurity and isolation of his youth. He possesses little patience for cruelty, arrogance, or cynicism and often reserves his greatest admiration for genuinely idealistic heroes.

He maintains exacting standards for both himself and others and expects absolute professionalism from anyone working with him.

Notes

Etienne became one of the defining background figures of the Modern Age superhero world, helping establish the idea that superhero costumes are not merely disguises, but carefully engineered symbols combining fashion, psychology, technology, and mythology.

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