Cole Urges Social Activism

Fashion guru Kenneth Cole explained his unique blend of passions—shoes and social causes—to a crowd of future activists and entrepreneurs at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum last night.

Cole, CEO and president of Kenneth Cole Productions Inc. and a son-in-law of former New York Governor Mario Cuomo, is well known for his causes—ranging from AIDS to homelessness—and for his controversial advertisements.

In 1987—when uncertainty and fear about AIDS was still rampant—he placed a full-page ad in a magazine of a single condom with the words “Shoes aren’t the only thing we encourage you to wear.”

In the talk, which was sponsored by the Student Entrepreneurship Council, the shoemaker talked mostly about how he got his business off the ground and how he tried to balance his agendas, both corporate and social.

In 1983, when Cole started selling his shoes, he said he was confident about his chances to succeed in the fashion world, with failure never crossing his mind.

“I never contemplated that possibility,” Cole said. “I always knew it’d work. I just didn’t know what it was.”

A Brooklyn native born into a tradition of shoe manufacturing—his father made Candies, a popular shoe in the 1970s—Cole started his career by selling 40,000 shoes out of a 40-foot trailer parked across from the New York Hilton in just over two days.

He swindled New York’s City Hall into allowing him to park the trailer by claiming that he was making a movie about shoes, he said.

He said he feels responsibility to his employees and his customers, as well as to his stockholders.

A member of the National Board of the American Foundation for AIDS Research and HELP USA, an organization that aims to help the homeless, Cole advocated for both of his core issues during his speech.

But at the same time, he emphasized that no matter what cause one advocates, one will be judged by what one wears.

“It’s still very much about how you look and what you wear,” he said.

Cole recently authored a book about his family, relatives and fashion, entitled Footnotes: What You Stand For Is more Important Than What You Stand In.

But at the same time, Cole said he does not consider himself a public person.

“I’m a business person, a designer,” he said.