Fashioned for a good cause
There is nothing like a celebrity stepping forward as a do-gooder to bring out the skeptics. (Google: “Madonna” and “Malawi.”) After all, it can be difficult to separate a publicity stunt from a heartfelt desire to help alleviate suffering.
The fashion industry and its stars are especially suspect. That’s because theirs is a business that places so much emphasis on image. There is a tendency to believe all things are in service to the fantasy.
The current most-favored cause of the fashion industry is the AIDS epidemic in Africa. It is the focus of both (Product) Red and the “I Am African” campaign. Neither has been spared from cynicism. Both may simply be guilty of pragmatism.
(Product) Red was launched in the United States this fall. The project, headed by Santa Monica Mayor Pro-Tem Bobby Shriver and U2 lead singer Bono, benefited from an Oprah Winfrey juggernaut. The talk-show host talked about the project, showing footage of her tearing around Chicago, with Bono riding shotgun in a red sports coupe, on a spree for Red T-shirts and sunglasses.
The idea behind (Product) Red is simple. Companies produce goods that are sold to the general public and a portion of the proceeds will be used “to help eliminate AIDS in Africa,” according to the tags on the products. It’s certainly not a new concept. For example, 100% of the proceeds from MAC Cosmetics’ Viva Glam lipstick goes to the company’s AIDS fund, which was established in 1994, and the money benefits groups that provide care for those affected by HIV. The fund has distributed more than $70 million globally.
What distinguishes Red, says Shriver, a member of the Kennedy family, is its breadth. Companies such as the Gap have created an entire line of Red T-shirts, hoodies, jeans and jackets. Giorgio Armani created a collection of Red apparel under his Emporio Armani label and launched it during London’s fashion week in September with a glitzy runway presentation and concert. Converse created sneakers stitched out of mudcloth for sale under the Red banner. The percentage each company will donate varies, but the commitments are for five years.
“That it be a main line within the brand was part of the deal. We wouldn’t accept something peripheral.... I don’t want to be in the charity bin,” says Shriver, who helped conceive the “Very Special Christmas” albums as a way to benefit Special Olympics. He first met Bono through that effort.
The “I Am African” campaign was created in the summer by model and cosmetics entrepreneur Iman, who started with the idea that Africa is the mother continent. In the series of black-and-white images appearing in magazines, celebrities such as her husband, musician David Bowie; actors Gwyneth Paltrow, Sarah Jessica Parker and Richard Gere; singers Seal and Alicia Keys; and “Project Runway’s” Heidi Klum wear face paint based on traditional tribal markings. The goal is to raise awareness about AIDS in Africa and to direct potential donors to the Keep a Child Alive program and its message that $1 a day can provide medicine to an HIV-infected child.
Questions have come from the media, bloggers and the fashion industry itself. Why don’t the Red companies donate 100% of the proceeds from products? Why did Armani have to undertake such a flashy runway production to make his point? Why did Winfrey have to make such a show of buying Red products?
Internet blogs have been especially unkind to the “I Am African” campaign and, in particular, the image of Paltrow, who also appears in Estee Lauder advertisements. They see her as too much of a Mayflower blond to espouse any kinship with Africa.
Shriver says the Gap offered to create a single item whose sale would wholly benefit AIDS eradication. He declined. “I hope the people in the Gap have enough Red profits to buy a house in the Hamptons,” he says. Shriver wanted companies to have a selfish, dollars-and-cents reason for revving up their formidable advertising and marketing machines.
The money raised by the Red-labeled goods benefits the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, which was created in 2002. Originally, it was conceived as a partnership between governments and private industry. But after almost four years, governments had committed $10 billion, Shriver says, and the private sector had donated $2 million -- almost nothing in comparison.
In its first five months of operation, the Red project, which began in England, has raised $10 million.
Iman also is being a realist. Might the celebrities who posed for portraits have their own agendas? Could their participation have to do with a desire to burnish their own image? Certainly. But if “celebrities can do something for Africa, why should I care what their agendas are?”
“We’re force-fed celebrities: what they wear, how much they eat, how much they don’t eat,” she says. But those images sell magazines, raise ratings and get people talking. What if that same amount of attention could be directed to the AIDS epidemic in Africa? “I say use anybody, by all means necessary.”
