Exploring Life & Business with Marquelle Turner-Gilchrist of Atelier Lenora

Today we’d like to introduce you to Marquelle Turner-Gilchrist.

Hi Marquelle, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory. 
I was born and raised in a small, rural town in North Carolina called Johnsonville. For context on how small and rural, when I was growing up, we did not have any stoplights, and we had to drive to the nearest town for larger retail chains. I grew up in a single-parent household. While I have 3 sisters, I only grew up in the same house with my youngest. Initially, I had wanted to be a singer. I was so convinced that I was going to be a singer that I almost didn’t go to college; however, I am grateful that I did. I applied for one four-year university and I had plans to apply to one community college as a backup. I went on a tour of Fayetteville State University, and the admissions counselor asked me a few questions about my extra-curricular activities and recommended that I apply for the Honors Program. The Honors Program was a full-ride scholarship. My only commitments were to maintain a certain GPA, commit to a certain number of community service hours, and to do an internship every year. I applied and was ultimately accepted. Growing up extremely poor, I saw this acceptance as a path toward ending the poverty cycle. After graduating from Fayetteville State University, I went on to work in higher education before transitioning into fashion. I ended up going to graduate school, where I completed a dual-degree global luxury management graduate program split between NC State University (Raleigh, NC) and SKEMA Business School (Sophia Antipolis, France). Once I returned from France, I moved to NYC and officially kicked off my career in fashion. I worked a Hugo Boss for almost two years before moving to the Middle East to help open one of the largest luxury department stores in Doha, Qatar. These three years were transformative for me. Financially, it changed my life and gave me access to travel, new experiences, and an overall different lifestyle. Professionally, it allowed me to go to fashion shows all over the world and strengthen future career opportunities. After returning from Doha, I went back to Hugo Boss to take on a larger role, moved on to roles at Gucci and a small retail innovation start-up, and then ultimately moved to LA in April of 2022 on what they call “a wing and a prayer.”

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The journey has been filled with many peaks and valleys. One of the biggest challenges in life, to date, was moving to NYC the way I did. I moved to NYC without any money saved up and no true career prospects. I slept on a couch for the very first year and struggled through building a new community, being able to afford living in a very expensive city, and navigating the next phase of my career. The only thing I knew for sure was that I wanted to work in fashion and that I could not do it on the level I wanted living in North Carolina. Fortunately, I had a really great mentor, Kenny Anderson, who helped me to land my very first major interview and things started to turn around from there.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Atelier Lenora (AL) is a consulting firm that connects creativity to commerce through research, strategy ideation, special project management, and partnership develop. I started AL out of necessity. It wasn’t my goal to become an entrepreneur. In fact, I was very frightened by it; however, I wasn’t able to find a full-time role when I first moved to LA for the first few months. My friend, Austin Thach, recommended me to support one of his clients and that is what gave me the idea to pursue my own business ventures.

I am most proud of launching a fashion table editorial book through AL as Project Director. Back in 2015, I created The New Stereotype (TNS). TNS celebrates and highlights the many diverse layers of black life in America through fashion, photography, and film. In 2020, alongside Olushola Bashorun, Wendy Oduor and Fred Sands, IV, we began the journey to complete STORIES. STORIES is a year-long story-telling journey that celebrates the lives of Black men and women in their truest and most authentic form. The result: an engaging coffee table book featuring more than 50 people across 26 original fashion editorials shot in New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Each installment of the book, labeled a CHAPTER, as an ode to the synopsis of each person’s story, serves as an interconnected thread to show how Black men and women are both a powerful ballad individually yet an unspoken symphony in unison.

We had a book launch in New York City in November of 2023, and we just did an LA launch event last month (February 2024) in partnership with Los Angeles Room and Board. Additionally, we spoke on a panel at Bank of America’s Headquarters (NYC), a student conversation at the Fashion Institute of Technology and Wavemakers (a leading media agency in NYC). I’m grateful for these opportunities and this one to share the work with more people.

What were you like growing up?
Growing up, I was very shy and very reserved. I am still shy in many social settings, but I am learning to step out of that. In fact, one of my goals for this year is to step out of my comfort zone and to do simple things like introduce myself to people. Due to the environment I grew up in, my mom was very protective of me and the things that I did. I didn’t like it growing up, but as an adult, I am grateful that she did. A lot of the things she taught me, alongside the faith instilled in me from my grandparents, are the very things I still lean on today. I’ve been very fortunate to have a global career and some very unique personal global experiences, too. I’m grateful for them, but the lessons I learned in that small rural town are still near and dear to me, and I hope that they will remain that way.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.atelierlenora.com
• Instagram: @marquelleturner
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/marquelleturner

Image Credits
Olushola Bashorun
Fred Sands