Making a difference

Being aware is more important than what you wear, says designer Kenneth Cole.

SEEN in a store window: “No good deed should go unpublished.”

Those words were splashed across the window display of a Kenneth Cole store in midtown Manhattan just before the Thanksgiving season.

The window display of the Kenneth Cole store near Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, New York, promoting Awearness.

But the American designer wants to make more than just a fashion statement. His latest project is called “Awearness” to mark his 25-year effort to raise social awareness on topics as diverse as volunteerism and HIV to gun control.

To commemorate the occasion, Cole has edited a book which contains 86 essays contributed by an endless list of who’s who; Robert Redford, Jon Bon Jovi, Elton John, Lance Armstrong, Bill Clinton, Jane Fonda and so on.

Fonda, for example, talks about preventing teen pregnancies, New York City mayor Michael R. Bloomberg touches on public health policies, while TV host Rachael Ray shares her endeavours to get children to eat healthy food.

“It should be an embarrassment to every American that any child would go hungry in a country of plenty,” she writes.

Cole, who promoted Awearness: Inspiring Stories About How to Make a Difference at a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Tribeca recently, spoke of the heartening encounters during his previous book events.

American designer Kenneth Cole’s Awearness project marks his 25-year effort to raise social awareness on various issues.

He recounted the story of a man who came up to him with a confession.

“Not so long ago, I stole a jacket from your store,” the guy told Cole. He wanted to know how he could pay for the jacket.

The designer took the news in his stride. “Send me an e-mail on how you did it,” he told the self-confessed thief, who did just that.

In the end, Cole said, “I was inspired, and so was he.”

He said the book would be an extraordinary gift to give to friends and loved ones. “It would even be a good gift for someone you don’t like,” he joked.

To him, there were many wonderful, untold stories about people who had done good.

“I’m not the author. I am just an accessory, a facilitator,” he said.

Cole, who started in fashion with a shoe business in 1982, explained that his venture into social awareness was prompted by the public consciousness which swept the nation throughout the 1980s.

“There were Live Aid and Hands Across America, which fought against hunger,” he recalled as examples.

Those events, he said, were astounding because people were joining hands to help others from far-flung countries such as Ethiopia.

Back then, he was already working towards removing the stigma about HIV and AIDS.

“There was little talk about it then. Nobody wanted to deal much with it because people would assume that you had the disease,” he said. More so for a single male designer like him then. Cole, who is now married with three daughters, is currently the chairman of The Foundation for AIDS Research (amfAR).

He believed that it was incumbent upon communities to help and provide for one another.

“Otherwise, we are not going to make it,” he said.

But Cole acknowledged that in these tough economic times, philanthropy and social service are going through hard times, too.

“Unfortunately, that is needed even more these days, as more people are going to be homeless,” he said. “These days, you wake up and you read the news, it kind of makes you want to run in front of a truck.”

His social awareness project was a humbling experience for him as a designer.

“Nobody needs what we sell. We’ve got to convince them that they do. No woman in America needs another pair of black shoes,” he said.

The designer has been quick to make his political statements. At 4am, just hours after Barack Obama’s acceptance speech on Nov 4, his company put up a billboard in Manhattan to congratulate America’s first black president. “A precedent we can be proud of”, the billboard said.

There was a Plan B if John McCain had won. The billboard would have stated “Out with the old, in with the older”.

Asked which contributor in the book had inspired him the most, Cole said: “In the essence of being prudent, I would say it’s my wife.” Maria Cuomo Cole heads the country’s largest non-profit developer and operator of housing for the homeless.

“She works tirelessly every day,” he said.

The designer has also established the Awearness Fund to help charities dealing with HIV and the homeless.

“We have always believed that being aware is more important than what you wear,” he wrote in the introduction to Awearness.