Lesley Taylor

Lesley Taylor MA, FHEA

Associate Lecturer

School of Art, Design and Fashion

Room no. JM505

Biography

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.

Taught courses

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BA (Hons) Fashion Buying and Merchandising
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BA (Hons) Fashion Management with Marketing

Further information

  1. Industry experience

    Lesley has worked in a variety of roles in the field of visual merchandising. Click the link below to find out more.

    Lesley has worked for the Burton Group/Arcadia brands and Allders Department Stores and head office in roles such as store visual merchandiser, regional visual merchandising trainer, senior visual merchandising manager, and head office visual merchandising project team member (9 years).

    Lesley has also been the POS co-ordinator for the Tie Rack head office, where she was responsible for all large format POS, print schedules, being on site at photo shoots, supplier liaison, and window graphics design.

    She also has experience as a commercial print and design account manager.

    Lesley has been director of Gloss Interior Styling since 2003. 

  2. Teaching experience

    Lesley has held many teaching positions in the field of visual merchandising and fashion retail. Click the link below to find out more.

    Lesley's current roles include:

    Associate Lecturer: Solent University (since 2007)
    Associate Lecturer: Central Saint Martins short courses and bespoke training (since 2014)
    Consultant lecturer: Istituto Marangoni (since 2014)
    Consultant lecturer: Highbury College, Portsmouth (since 2008)

    Specialisms: visual merchandising, fashion retail, design process
    Levels: short course, BA and MA


    Her previous roles include:

    Associate lecturer: London College of Fashion (2012-15)
    Consultant lecturer and online moderator: London College of Contemporary Arts (2014-15)
    Associate lecturer: Chelsea College of Art (2007-2010)
    Associate lecturer: London College of Communication (2008)

    Specialisms: visual merchandising, interior design
    Levels: short course, BA and MA

  3. Recent publications

    Lesley contributed a paper entitled 'The deconstructed garment as basis for organising the performance of a curated space' for the Interior Educators Conference 2012.

  4. Research interests

    Lesley's research interests lie in the fields of visual merchandising and interior design. Click the link below to find out more.
    • PhD application proposal area: Visual presentation standards and customer response to fashion and lifestyle retail discounting.
    • The unfinished space: interior processes and imperfections.