Designing Handbags for a Cause

What if you could design handbags and then, from your profits, donate money to a cause you believe in? This has been the case over the past few weeks, with a Hollywood starlet designing a handbag for Haiti and a teen in Greenville, New York, selling his handbags to raise money for a school. In either case, the money from the handbags sold is going to a local or national cause. The celebrity behind the former, Scarlett Johansson, so far hasn’t made any step into the fashion world – although, could a fragrance be far behind? – while the teen in the latter story has been designing handbags for a few years and, recently, was noticed by a boutique in his New York town.

Liam Manak, the teen from New York, has been knitting handbags for several years. According to the article under the link, his designs were noticed by a boutique in his town recently, where they are being sold, but, as far as raising money through fashion goes, he planned to sell his handbags at the Valentine’s Boutique Monday to raise money for Tuxedo Park School, a private school in his community. Not only are his handbag designs benefitting the school but, also, they put some focus on the local business community in Greenville.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the handbag Scarlett Johansson designed for Haiti. The actress, best known for roles in Lost in Translation and a few recent Woody Allen films, designed her handbag with an ancient Haitian script. The design itself will be sold at Mango stores and the profits from those sold will be going to Oxfam. Although relief efforts for the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake have focused on getting supplies and food to the country, the profits from Johansson’s handbags are going toward clean water efforts in Haiti.