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OWNER AND CREATIVE DIRECTOR IS LISA KENSINGTON-WRIGHT
Born into an English family, her mother a horse breeder with a fondness of dressage, Lisa Kensington-Wright had always been a lover of fashion. Pursuing this initially as a hobby, her dream career as a child was to become a plastic surgeon. Her father, thinking this rather strange for his daughter, took Lisa at an early age to medical school to show her a few body parts. After discovering this to be too macabre, her creative aspirations turned to fashion. This stayed purely as a pastime whilst she continued her private education. Being always a model pupil, Lisa glided through consistently achieving straight A's. Law was later put to her as a career predicted to be the most financially rewarding at her time of graduation. After choosing to study the criminal side, she put her energy into her degree. Six months in Lisa became bored and realized the reality would be spending most of her career amongst criminals, which did not appeal. She packed in her boring studies to take a job offered to her in Italy where she would be selling exclusive artwork to private VIP clients. This Italian adventure exposed her to the wonderful world of Italian fashion. She was signed to her first modelling agency in Milan, then to one in Paris. She focused on catwalk and editorial work and had finally found her passion. Hugely inspired she returned to London in order to continue her studies in this fascinating and challenging industry. Naturally, being used to the best schools, colleges and grades, Lisa would want to go only to the most prestigious fashion school......Central St Martins in London. This university had educated the talents of many famous fashion designers including John Galliano, Alexander McQueen, Phoebe Philo and Stella Mcartney, to name just a few. In order to enter, an exceptional portfolio was required along with appropriate academic grades. Excellent grades she already had, so to produce her portfolio, after researching the best school for fashion design pre-degree, she discovered a school in Devon dedicated to this task. From here she left with flying colours. She was the first 1st year ever in the history of the college to receive a distinction for her first fashion design brief. Her final collection and portfolio of two years gained her a place on the BA Honours Fashion Design and Marketing course at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, as she had wished. During her second year of study she was asked to work for the headlining fashion designer, Arkadius, who had recently graduated from Central St Martins with a double first from the same course following his apprenticeship arranged by Isabella Blow with Alexander Mcqueen. Within 6 months she had become his PA and was producing couture and prêt-a-porter shows of womenswear and menswear for the main fashion calendars and private views in different fashion capitals around the world. Within two years they produced 16 events in countries including the UK, France, Russia, Brazil, Switzerland and Poland. Up until now Arkadius had produced over 28 shows world-wide, with 8 shows alone for London Fashion Week. The House was achieving more press in the UK than any other fashion house at that time.To date there is over 4000 pages of global press with over 300 TV interviews. They won awards including the New Generation Award from the British Fashion council, The Elle Style Awards, the Polish Designer of the Year and in 2001the industry experts chose the House as one of the 10 leading designers in the UK. They collaborated with Ebel, Faber Castell, Jimmy Choo, Christian Louboutin, Swarovski and Philip Treacy amongst many other prestigious luxury brands. They worked alongside other leading fashion designers and held shows in collaboration with Credit Suisse ( Switzerland), Access Industries,(USA & Russia), Jaguar, Mercedes, British Airways, Aeroflot and British American tobacco Company. The collections are shown frequently on FTV, SKY, Canal +, as well as being featured worldwide editorially on-line and in print. After a successful 2 years at Arkadius, Lisa left to establish her own identity in the world of fashion. She initially created 4lisa Model Management in 2003 where she represented female and male models to clients in Switzerland, France and the UK. Following the success of this she sold the company to a larger agency and took to the creation of the fashion house Elle4lisa. Consecutively she worked for a private stockbroking firm in Mayfair where she introduced her clients to the financial products and bonds which the company traded in. She managed a team of brokers and arranged private events as well as designing the company marketing literature and directing the shoots for the stockbroking houses brand identity. At the same time Lisa was establishing her label, Elle4lisa, with The British Fashion Council in order to be recognized as a strong British fashion label.