Prabal Gurung Collaborates with TOMS

Prabal Gurung Collaborates with TOMS

 

Last week TOMS announced their collaboration with designer Prabal Gurung. As is expected from a TOMS product, for each item sold from the four piece collection, a child in need will receive a pair of shoes. Additionally, £5 from each pair sold will go to Gurung’s Shikshya Foundation in Nepal.

Gurung started the foundation in 2011, along with his sister and friends, to offer educational opportunities to Nepalese youths. “What I realized is that the only reason a boy like me from Nepal could dream big and come to a country like America, and think I could make a living and a name for myself, is simply because I was educated and had the opportunity to go to good schools,” he told Vogue last week. “Education gave me the freedom to dream bigger.” The foundation has recently begun supporting relief efforts for the 2015 earthquake in Nepal as well.

 

Regarding this collaboration with TOMS, Gurung told Vogue UK, “TOMS was a brand we had always hoped we could work with in some capacity.  I have always respected what they have done and the message behind the brand really resonates with me. I was put in touch with their team soon after the earthquake in Nepal through a mutual friend who does a lot of work for Nepal’s healthcare system. He felt that the time was right and it was.”

TOMS has been in operation since 2006, now offering a decade of experience in charitable giving rolled into a business. Regarding collaborations including the current one with Prabal Gurung,  “We call these designer partnerships our “energy” moments,” TOMS founder Blake Mycoskie said in the same interview. “After 10 years of TOMS, we’re in a place where we’ve established the TOMS brand as the leader of the One for One business, and these amazing designer collaborations help us spread the movement to audiences we may not have reached before.”

Ranging in price from $59 to $129, the collection offers two printed versions of the classic TOMS slip-on, a pair of snow leopard patterned sneakers, and a pair of black suede boots featuring faux hair and a suede wrapping. “We wanted to offer styles and prints that had a timelessness to them and really emulated our brand characteristics,” Gurung told Vogue UK regarding the collaboration. “The colours used, the graphic detailing, and the traditional and modern balance were all important elements to work into the collection.”

 

Prabal Gurung Collaborates with TOMS