TOMS and the Keith Haring Foundation team up to create a capsule collection of shoes and sunglasses featuring a selection of Keith Haring’s iconic works.
In 2006, American traveller Blake Mycoskie befriended children in a village in Argentina who had no shoes to protect their feet. Wanting to help, he created TOMS, a company that would match every pair of shoes purchased with a pair of new shoes given to a child in need. One for One®.
Realizing that One for One could serve other basic needs, five years later Blake launched TOMS Eyewear; with every pair purchased, TOMS helps restore sight to a person in need. Having just celebrated its first decade, the TOMS movement continues to grow and evolve, having created three additional One for One businesses with the simple premise that for every product you purchase, TOMS will help a person in need. In short, TOMS is in business to help improve lives.
As simple as the One for One idea is, it is an extremely powerful one: Over the past ten years TOMS has given over 60 million new pairs of shoes, restored sight to over 400,000 people, provided over 335,000 weeks of safe water, and helped more than 25,000 mothers give birth safely.
During his brief but intense career, Keith Haring (1958-1990) was also committed to making a difference through his art. Beginning with the hundreds of chalk drawings he created on unused advertising panels in New York’s subway stations between 1980 and 1985, via his hugely popular designs for Swatch and Absolut Vodka, and culminating in his Soho Pop Shop, selling T-shirts, posters, buttons and other low-cost products bearing his artwork, he was dedicated to making his art accessible to as wide an audience as possible.
Haring had broader concerns, however, than just extending his reputation as an artist. His work often carried social messages and he devoted much of his time and talent to creating public works in dozens of cities around the world, many of which were created for charities, hospitals, children’s daycare centres, orphanages and disadvantaged communities. Haring also held art workshops for children in schools and museums, and created imagery for literacy programmes and public service campaigns. In 1989, he established the Keith Haring Foundation, which continues to support Haring’s philanthropic legacy and ideals. In accordance with Keith’s wishes, the Foundation provides support for not-for-profit children’s programmes and AIDS-related organizations.
Honouring this mandate, and staying true to the artist’s determination to create art accessible to all, the Keith Haring Foundation have joined forces with TOMS to celebrate the artist’s legacy through a capsule collection of footwear and sunglasses featuring a selection of Keith Haring’s signature line drawings.
The collection will be available from June 7 in TOMS shops, retailers and online. And, as always, for every product you purchase, TOMS will help a person in need. One for One and Art for All…it doesn’t get much better than that!
