Lenese Calleea Emerging Designer Profile

Lenese Calleea Griffin is an American designer born and raised in Chicago, Illinois.

Lenese knew that she wanted to be a designer at the age of nine always watching her grandmother sew and playing games around her grandmother’s antique sewing machine until her grandmother finally taught her how to use it.

She attended Thornwood high school where she studied Arts and Communication.

After graduating from high school she attended Northern Illinois University where she studied Textiles, Apparel, and Merchandising. While attending Northern Illinois University Lenese joined Present Perfect Modeling Organization, where she hit the catwalk in various fashion shows around the colleges campus.

Wanting to learn and be hands own with designing, Lenese transferred to Columbia College Chicago where she majored in Fashion Design. While at Columbia College Lenese missed modeling and decided to start an organization on campus.

She called the organization Fashion Elite Modeling Organization. She recruited various students from the campus to join her and they built a dynamic foundation. The first show that the organization produced on campus, sold out tickets in less then three days. The fashion show was a great success and Lenese was able to show case her first collection.

The fashion show did so well that Lenese’s clientele begin to rise. She decided to call the name of her clothing line Calleea’Vatein, a combination of her middle name combined with the name of her two grandmothers. Her grandmother teaching her to sew as a little girl and helping to fund furthering her education in fashion.

By the time Lenese was a senior at Columbia she worked several jobs in the fashion retail industry including Wet Seal, Aldo, and Banana Republic.

She was able to learn fashion business and build experience in many different areas of the fashion industry, Including management, marketing and visual merchandising.

Continuing to learn and perfect her craft Lenese took a job as an embroidery designer where she learned to print professional custom made apparel and also learned many different techniques in printmaking including silk-screening and lithography.

Today, Lenese is continuing to learn and grow her business label by producing Ready-To-Wear apparel and maintaining a management position in the fashion retail industry.