Looking for a way to earn horse show money, Lilly turned her jewelry making into a business: LillaBessie.
Hi! My name is Lilly Levesque. I’m a 17-year-old high school senior in Evergreen, Colo., with a passion for horses. I started riding when I was 10 years old. I was actively involved in Girl Scouts, and in the summer of 2016, I had attended a week-long horse camp.
After the week was up, I asked my mom if I could go back and ride the horses again. Instead, for Christmas that year, she got me a package of riding lessons. I was ecstatic, and after just a couple lessons, I had officially caught the horsey bug.
For the next year, I dabbled in and out of disciplines, trying to find what was right for me. After a short stint of barrel racing, my trainer sat me down and gave me a list of different options to choose from. Eventually, I settled on western pleasure.
While I’m still not entirely sure if I chose it for the fact that it’s the complete opposite of barrel racing or for the sparkles, I immediately fell in love. Around the same time, my trainer brought in a stocky little Quarter Horse whose time in the major show pen was over, but who was the perfect teacher for my newfound discipline.
Starting a Business
We attended local schooling and 4-H shows, and as time went on, I became deeply invested in showing Quarter Horses. This also meant I was burdened with the hefty costs associated with showing. I’ve never been a stranger to hard work, so I decided to come up with a creative way to cover these costs. I found the answer in my mother’s old Etsy shop, LillaBessie.
Outside of my mother’s interior design company, she’d make resin necklaces and customizable tote bags. When brainstorming how to pay for the horses, she suggested I start an equestrian jewelry business and use her Etsy shop as a platform to sell them.
When I was 12, LillaBessie came back to life in the form of my unique horse hair jewelry. I love showing with the American Quarter Horse Association (AQHA) because of the emphasis on elegance and perfection, and these are two characteristics I’ve incorporated into my jewelry over the years.
Different from most horse hair jewelry on the market, LillaBessie’s jewelry features a swirled acrylic background and artfully placed pieces of horse hair (sent in from the customer’s own horse), all encased with a glass top and strung on a silver cord.
Like horses, no two will ever be the same. The result is beautiful and modern jewelry that allows a piece of the client’s horse to stay close to their heart. I love the stories that customers share about the horse’s hair that I am using, as many of them are purchasing a memorial piece.
New Horse, New Purpose
The summer before I started high school, I realized I would need a new horse if I wanted to move up in competition, with my sights ultimately set on the American Quarter Horse Association Youth World Championship Show.
My trainer found a gorgeous Appendix gelding, Carson, and after trying him for the first time, we knew he was the perfect horse for me. But this meant I now had to cover board, vet, and farrier bills, and everything else in between.
LillaBessie had gained some traction, and between that and mucking stalls, I was able to afford a full lease on Carson. Unfortunately, three months after bringing him home, he suffered a kick from another horse in the pasture and broke his splint bone.
He required surgery and six months of stall rest. The bills were expensive, and without LillaBessie, I wouldn’t have been able to afford them. This injury also put an abrupt halt to my plans of showing on the AQHA circuit.
After a year of rehab, I was finally able to debut Carson in the show pen at the Rocky Mountain Quarter Horse Association’s Rocktoberfest in the fall of 2022. As the year went on, Carson and I found great success in hunter under saddle, winning almost every class we entered and earning first in the state for year-end awards.
Now that I’m in my senior year of high school, I will be using the proceeds to help pay for college expenses, where I am planning on studying Microbiology with hopes of applying it in an equine setting.
I am eternally grateful for all of the opportunities LillaBessie has given me, and I hope this business allows me to keep Carson when I begin college next year!
To order or view Lilly’s collection, visit etsy.com/shop/LillaBessie.
This article about LillaBessie appeared in the January/February 2024 issue of Young Rider magazine. Click here to subscribe!
