About Luxury Basics

Leslie has been designing her hand crafted jewelry pieces for the past 18 years. Initially started as a hobby, and later, with a website as a fully-engaged hobby-business.

She comes by her talent the old-fashioned way – she inherited it. Her Mother was an artist when she was growing up in Evanston, Illinois and exposed her and her siblings to the world class art and architecture in the Chicago area.

In college, she was able to take numerous courses in Art History and since then, has had an enduring and active interest in art, craft, sculpture and architecture.

Her greatest influence has been Japanese art and design throughout the ages.

Although she discovered early on that drawing was not one of her strengths, Leslie used her design and handicraft skills at an early age, designing and making jewelry at age 9, knitting and crocheting, designing and making clothes and making pottery at varying times throughout her life. More recently, she has also enjoyed designing furniture.

Her involvement in jewelry design mainly took a back seat to her career as a serial entrepreneur, operating executive and CEO. She had many well-known clients in fashion design, fabric design/manufacture and jewelry.

From a design standpoint, Leslie’s designs are modern, artful – timeless and wearable – yet, not so dear that they need to be locked up at night.