Former resident featured in Wall Street Journal
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Leslie Peck danced her way from the Gila Valley to Florida and then to New York City, where she was hired to apply facial makeup to models at a recent fashion show.
On Feb. 4, Peck, a former Safford resident, daughter of Bob Peck and granddaughter of Zona Peck, applied eye makeup to 22 fashion models at the New York fashion week headquarters in Bryant Park - and her grandmother, a former Valley beautician, couldn’t be prouder.
“I’m just busting at the seams,” Zona said.
Leslie’s career as a makeup artist is featured on the front page of the Feb. 9 issue of the Wall Street Journal. The story, written by Ellen Byron, states 30-year-old Leslie got her big break after working behind the cosmetics counter in Bloomingdale’s in New York.
In 2004, she went to work for Estee Lauder’s MAC cosmetics line, which is sold in department stores and MAC stores. The MAC brand trains its salespeople to apply makeup for fashion shows, photo shoots and films, and arranges fashion week assignments, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Leslie earned her MAC fashion-show certification, and when she finally got to New York, she took a job as a MAC counter artist at Bloomingdale’s 59th Street store.
When she was initially not chosen to apply the green and gold eye shadow to models’ faces, Leslie called the show’s coordinator and was offered a makeup position for the show. She worked beside high-profile makeup artist Charlotte Tilbury, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Leslie, who grew up in the Valley and attended school in Thatcher, became interested in makeup at her grandmother’s beauty shop, the Beauty Bar, in Safford. Grandma Zona said when Leslie and her friends were in middle school they would come to the shop after school and experiment with hairstyles and makeup.
Her first love, however, was dancing.
“Leslie started training right here in Safford at the dance studio,” Zona said.
Leslie pursued a dancing career in Florida after graduating from college, but a leg tumor ended her professional dancing days, although she still gave lessons.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Leslie taught dancing on the side in Florida to earn money for her move to New York to pursue a career as a makeup artist.
One of Leslie’s most memorable students was Mikhail Baryshnikov, a Russian ballet dancer who defected to Canada in 1974 and eventually came to the United States.
Zona said Baryshnikov asked Leslie to teach him some ballroom dance steps.
