When I was in college, I would constantly get replies to emails, and even emails sent directly to me, where the person writing would confuse the upper case ‘I’ as a lower case ‘L’. So instead of emailing me back and calling me by my government name – “eye-E-sha”, I would get “leh-sha”. It would drive me crazy, so much that my friends began calling me Lesha as a joke. The joke kept going to the point where they had nicknamed me Lesh. After that, I just embodied the idea of “If you can’t beat them, join them” and I took that on as my nickname or my ultimate fashion persona who is a little sarcastic (okay, a lot sarcastic) and likes to be cheeky and lets herself live the luxury life no matter the cost.

Here’s something that many don’t know…LivingLesh wasn’t always a petite fashion and luxury lifestyle blog. It originally started as a space where I wrote down my drafts of my poetry for my master’s thesis project which I have now self-published for you to purchase – ‘How Do You See Me?‘. In that original space, I was able to share those poems and receive feedback as well as take surveys to further produce my thesis.

As I was finishing my thesis, I began to think of what I wanted to do with the site. I didn’t just want to scrap it, so I decided take my love for fashion, the styling experience I already had, and my passion for writing and combine it into one and create the LivingLesh you now see. Over the years, it has grown and expanded and I have now taken my blog from being one website to a entire brand and business.

I started LivingLesh because I wanted to inspire women to live their best lives by their own definitions. It is my passion to share how to create a luxe life for yourself without having to break the bank, and that’s exactly what I share on my blog and social media platforms.

I am classified as petite. Height wise, the doctors say that I am 5’3″. When shopping, I typically purchase pants in size ‘short’ or get them tailored if I really want the pants and there are no other options. I don’t shop the petite sizing for dresses and tops as I tend to feel like they make those pieces a little too small.

When I was in college and began sending and receiving a lot more emails, people who would respond to me would confuse the capital ‘i’ in my first name for a lowercase ‘L’. So, instead of responding and addressing me as Iesha (eye-E-sha), I would be referred to as Lesha. For awhile it would drive me crazy. I mean, who really likes to be called by a different name than their actual name. And because it was driving me crazy, my friends thought it was hilarious and began calling me Lesha. Soon, Lesh became the nickname that my friends began calling me more frequently than they actual called me by my real name. So, instead of trying to fight it, I just started accepting it. And it stuck.

There are a number of ways to shop my outfits. First, if you are on the blog and looking at a particular outfit in a blog post, you can shop the post directly from that page right after the first paragraph. If you’re on my following me on Instagram and you see a look you love on there, I like the majority of my IG looks to my LiketoKnow.It page and I also post exclusive content there as well so I highly recommend you follow me there. And if you’re looking for a one-stop-shop where you can see everything including outfits I haven’t even posted about yet, you can head to my shop page where you can shop my closet as well as shop pieces that I am eyeballing but haven’t quite made the purchase just yet.

I have a number of top skincare products that I use depending on multiple factors such as the season, what’s currently going on in my life, and whether I currently have any breakouts or not. My top brands for skincare are Fresh Beauty, Dermalogica, and Bliss. Though I use a variety of other products, which you can shop in my Beauty shop page, I keep those brands as my base and build upon those for treatments, night regimen, masks, etc.

I use a combination of Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop to edit my photos with some presets that I used depending on how the photo was taken – whether it was indoor or outdoor and what my camera settings were at that time. I usually focus on playing with the exposure, dehaze, and split toning.

After I have gotten the photo to the right lighting and crispness I want, I tweak the HSL colors, the grain, and the vignette to my liking and try to maintain the look for each of the photos within that one post.

On Instagram, I created a Lightroom mobile preset based on playing around with the contrast and shadows then moving to up the luminescence on the colors that I want to pop on my profile and down-playing the ones that I don’t want to stand out on my profile. Then I put the photo into Snapseed and up the structure and sharpening in the details. Then in tuning, I put up the ambiance and also altering the brightness to make sure that the photo isn’t too dark before I post it to my feed.

My husband is my photographer. As my business grew, we decided that it would be great to take some of the creative tasks within blogging and do them “in-house”. He started off by taking some basic classes and self-taught himself on how to use the camera that we own now – Sony A7 III – which we absolutely love, and as we grow, we, together, learn of difference compositions and various shooting techniques. We have a 55mm prime lens, a 24mm f/1.4 lens, and a 24-70mm full-mount zoom lens that we interchange based off of the content we are shooting.

Over the years, I developed advanced strategies as a blogger and influencer that have led me to be able to generate a full time income from my business. I no longer depend on my follower counts on social media to secure me brand partnerships, but instead my business strategy.

I share all of my tips and strategies in my influencer business course – the Influencer Biz.

Yes! I am actively accepting new influencers and bloggers to coach. You can sign up for a session unique to your needs on the Influencer University.

To be honest, I can’t say that my pregnancy was fabulous. I love my son and I wouldn’t trade it for the whole universe, but I struggled through my pregnancy. I have PCOS, which made it hard for me to get pregnancy initially, I was on different hormonal drugs when we got pregnant, so my hormones were already very high to start with. My entire first trimester and the majority of my second trimester, I was constantly nauseous. I was teaching at the time, and it got to the point where my students were so used to me just walking out the classroom in the middle of a lesson or an activity and coming right back a few minutes later. They were great with continuing on and maintaining order, so I loved them for that. My third trimester, I was just uncomfortable. He dropped right at the beginning of my third trimester and was head down ready to come out for some time. We had a scare where we thought he was coming at 32 weeks, but he hung in there for another six and I delivered at 38 weeks when they decided that it was just time to break my water and induce me.

I mean, my travel bucket list is pretty much to travel absolutely everywhere that I possibly can. I am always up for an example and with so many place isn the world to so, why sit and say there I am going to limit myself and not just explore the world?

Instead of saying, what is on my travel bucket list, I think I’ll just provide you with the list of places that I am setting as a goal to get to before I turn 30.

Domestic:

International:

ve traveled since high school to various places around the U.S. as well as internationally. Here are the places I’ve traveled to so far.

Domestic:

International: