The last few months have seen several celebrities from across the globe announce their pregnancy. While Singaporean actress-model Sheila Sim took to Instagram to announce about having a baby girl soon, Filipino beauty queen Karen Gallman is also expecting a baby. Bollywood diva Anushka Sharma and Indian cricket team captain Virat Kolhi are also excited about having a baby in January 2021. It's known that celebrities pay a lot of attention towards prepping for their new family member and hence popular baby nursery designer from the US, Nina Takesh, feels that this is the perfect time to enter the Asian market.
Nina, who has designed baby nurseries for Hollywood stars like Angelina Jolie, music sensation Madonna, Gwen Stefani, Jennifer Lopez, Victoria Beckham, and more, now has offices in Singapore and Mumbai. "I am really looking forward to working in Asia. While I'm excited, I'm also nervous about this new beginning. But I'm sure I'll be able to satisfy my clients with my innovative nursery and home design skills like I've been doing so far," says Nina.
When she designed the nurseries for Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of Elvis Presley and ex-wife or Michael Jackson, she said to her, "Your eye for design is impeccable." In fact, after Nina designed a nursery for Jennifer Lopez's baby, she told her, "I'm glad I found you, Nina, else I would have been so stressed about finding the best for my kid."
Apart from being a baby nursery designer, Nina is also an interior designer and remodeling expert. She is also an interior design influencer on Instagram and has recently started her channel 'Red Elevator' on YouTube.
Looking back at Nina's journey
Nina attended the Lycee Francais de Los Angeles until the 9th grade and subsequently attended Westlake School for Girls, now known as Harvard Westlake. Speakers like Shirley Chisholm and Betty Friedan would visit the institute frequently and that's how she learned the importance of women's empowerment. After graduating from Westlake, she attended UCSD and received a BS in Sociology and a minor in French Literature. Later, she attended Pepperdine University and received an MBA with an international focus. Nina moved to Paris to complete the Pepperdine International MBA program and worked at Guy Laroche, the popular fashion house. She met her ex-husband while studying in Paris. Soon thereafter she married Gonzalo Rioja, a native of Argentina, and they moved to Buenos Aires.
Nina was new to Latin America and certainly to Argentina and although she was trilingual (fluent in French, English, and Farsi), she had become fluent in Spanish. In no time, she assimilated to the country and began to utilize her education and MBA and started to work for ACNielsen providing market research data to consumer packaged goods clients such as Kimberly Clark. She was later hired directly by Kimberly-Clark as the marketing director of the Huggies Infant care line.
The idea of getting into the business of baby boutiques and interior design came to her mind when she was expecting her son Maximiliano in 2001 (she divorced Gonzalo Rioja in 2003 and married Davin Mann in 2004). While shopping for a nursery, she was disappointed with the quality of baby furnishings. That's when she decided to venture into this business and became the co-founder of the luxury baby boutique Petit Tresor which was launched in 2002. After making a mark across the world, Nina is now looking forward to designing nurseries and houses in Singapore.
