Beyond Vivienne Westwood: When Designers Become Activists

VICE is covering the launch of the Global Goals for sustainable development. In the next 15 years, they want to achieve three massive tasks: end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice and fix climate change. Original article by Sami Emory for the Creators Project.

{A few weeks ago}, Miki Agrawal and Céline Semaan Vernon sat before a roomful of aspiring and active designers to talk about the future of social- and environmentally-minded design. Hosted by AIGA NY in their newly acquired pop-up space in lower Manhattan as part of their latest series of members-only events, the discussion was titled “Beyond Vivienne Westwood: Fashion brands that are changing the world." And, to say that these two designers were the perfect picks to headline just such a discussion, would be a gross understatement.

Agrawal is a fast-spoken, voracious entrepreneur who, along with many other accomplishments (including founding a chain of farm-to-table pizza restaurants, authoring the book “Do Cool Sh*t”, and landing a place on Forbes’ “Top 20 Millenials On a Mission” list), is the co-founder and CEO of THINX, a technologically inspired brand of underwear to protect women on their periods. Semaan Vernon, a Creators Project mainstay, founded and stands CEO of the activist boutique Slow Factory and co-founded Le Design Team. In her work at Slow Factory, Semaan Vernon transforms Creative Commons images—she is also a longstanding advocate for open data—into luxurious and eco-friendly scarves, ties, and bracelets to raise funds for causes such as WWF’s conservation initiatives.

Read full article here.

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