Lesley has worked in creative industries for 25 years covering fashion and lifestyle visual merchandising, as well crossing over to business-to-business and business-to-consumer, and design and print.
She has been lecturing for 10 years, mostly in London, utilising her industry experience. Alongside lecturing she has run her own commercial interior styling company (Gloss Interior Styling Ltd) specialising in hotels, bars and other commercial interiors projects since 2003.
Gloss was started as a reaction to the early 00s property boom and initially specialised in showhomes for south coast developers as well as Barratt and Berkeley Homes. This developed into hotel and bar interiors as the market shifted, and has recently developed into commissions for interiors for short term property lets as that market grows.
As a freelance lecturer Lesley has worked in recent years with a close group of colleagues in London teaching many short courses in fashion retail and visual merchandising for Central Saint Martins, Istituto Marangoni and working as a visual merchandising trainer and judge for the World Skills competition. She has taken part in academic conferences in London and has travelled to Spain to train international visual merchandisers at Inditex head office. She is based in Portsmouth, Hampshire, her home town.