Category: Philanthropy

There are ample opportunities to write about philanthropy undertaken by the design industry and I like to highlight these efforts when I can because it’s an opportunity to talk about an industry doing good in the world.

I met one of the most inspiring women I’ve come across in the design arena during a lunch put on by Welspun USA, the presentation that took place during the meal the company’s founder’s wife Dipali Goenka. She has been (and is) instrumental in championing women’s rights in India, and ensuring that Welspun maintains one of the most serious corporate social responsibility (CSR) models I’ve ever come across.

This model for philanthropy also happens to produce stylishly comfortable textiles for the home. To present how deep my respect for the effort in my diary entry Threads With a Soul, I delved into James Hillman’s The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, as he references Plato’s Myth of Er, which defines the soul as encompassing a person’s entire destiny.

One of New York City’s most well-known models of philanthropy is the Kips Bay Boys & Girls Club Decorator Show House, which I look forward to attending each year. I’ve featured a number of designer’s spaces paired with literature here on The Diary of an Improvateur, including Darryl Carter’s, which I paired with Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space; and Garrow Kedigian’s, which I paired with Evangeline Bruce’s Napoléon & Joséphine: An Improbable Marriage.