Austin Gives With Raven + Lily
Kirsten Dickerson is on a mission to root empowerment and dignity in marginalized women worldwide.
“Our world is suffering, and fashion is a part of it,” Kirsten Dickerson confides during a tour of her East Austin design studio. “Did you know that the fashion industry is the second-largest polluter after the gasand- coal industry? That is massive.”
Dickerson is the founder and CEO of Austin-based ethical fashion-and-lifestyle brand Raven + Lily, and her passion is contagious.
“If [as a consumer,] you aren’t paying attention and aren’t being thoughtful about how you’re impacting the world, then you’re having a negative impact, whether you’re aware of it or not,” she adds.
It’s that sense of awareness that serves as the solid foundation upon which Raven + Lily has built its story.
After moving to Austin with her husband in 2010, Dickerson, who has a background in the design and nonprofit worlds, launched her Raven + Lily clothing boutique in the summer of 2011 as a for-profit social business. As a B corporation, Raven + Lily is structured on the idea of sustainability and fair trade. It now employs more than 1,500 marginalized women worldwide—twentyfold the amount of women it employed when the store started out.
Dickerson has trusted partners who help train the women in design skills, like sewing and jewelry making. The goal, she says, is to “encourage the artisans to turn what they do into a sustainable business on their end.” Using her for-profit business model, Dickerson does this by treating her artisans in a way a nonprofit might not: as a business relationship.
Just like you might find at a bigger fashion house, Raven + Lily designs are exclusive, with patterns created from scratch in the studio. The company funds all the costs involved in its partnerships—the design, sample development, all the visits to see the artisans—and then factors that expense into the pricing of its products.
Each season, Dickerson’s goal is to create fashion-forward collections that will sell well in the West.
She wants people to walk into Raven + Lily because they want to admire the way something looks.
“Before you know the story, you have to want to come in. Everything has to speak for itself as something beautiful and high quality. I always say it’s like Anthropologie, except everything is made by a woman and it’s ethically produced, which is a big difference,” she explains. “A lot of people walk in and have no idea [the story behind the store].”
But once they learn how each item is produced, people slow down and take their time looking around, she notices.
Tags on each product tell a story of where the item was made and who made it.
“The story empowers the consumer to recognize that they have a voice and a choice, and they can choose to spend their money on things that have a positive or a negative impact,” Dickerson says.
Some of the most unique items lining the walls of Raven + Lily’s East Austin storefront are its beaded metal jewelry made from recycled bullet casings from past wars in Ethiopia.
“It’s a very labor-intensive process,” Dickerson says.
But it’s a craft Ethiopian villagers have been skilled in for centuries. The bullets are collected by farmers, melted down and tested for lead, and then every bead is hand formed and polished.
Outside the U.S., Raven + Lily partners with women in countries like Ethiopia, India, Cambodia, Kenya, Guatemala, Pakistan, Malaysia and Haiti, providing them with fair-trade wages, safe jobs, a sustainable income, health care and education for their families.
“We work with women who are refugees, formerly homeless, HIV positive, formerly enslaved, discriminated, abused. I mean, you name it. They all have a story. They all have come from poverty. You wouldn’t know it when you meet them though because they all have a smile,” Dickerson says, smiling herself.
In addition to being recognized in numerous business and style publications, and receiving an equal amount of philanthropic and fashion awards, Raven + Lily habitually gives back to the Austin community in two ways: The company donates products to support local nonprofits like Dress for Success, Little Black Dress Society, AIDS Services of Austin, Texas Advocacy Project, PeopleFund, HeartGift and more. It also hosts shopping nights at the store and donates 20 percent of the sales from each event back to a local nonprofit. Past store fundraisers have benefited the Rise School of Austin, the Breast Cancer Resource Centers of Texas and the Austin chapter of Rainforest Alliance.
In total, Raven + Lily gave more than $60,000 to the Austin community in 2015.
“I value nonprofits so much that are empowering and promote dignity, education and opportunity,” Dickerson says. “That’s what we give back to.”
Those strong keywords—empowerment, dignity, education and opportunity—are what Dickerson strives to provide communities on a global scale.
“For us, as a company, the more profitable we are, the more women we’re able to help employ,” she says. “And that employment equals breaking cycles of poverty.”
Read more about Kirsten Dickerson, her philosophy on philanthropy and the story behind Raven + Lily’s name at austinwomanmagazine.com.
Raven + Lily is a member of Austin Gives, an organization dedicated to highlighting businesses for doing good. In its four-year existence, Austin Gives has aggregated almost 400 Austin-area companies that have made the commitment to donate at least 1 percent of their annual earnings to charity. To learn more about Austin Gives, visit austin.gives
TUNE IN
Austin Gives talks with Austin Woman Publisher Melinda Garvey and Raven + Lily Founder Kirsten Dickerson about the importance of giving in Austin.
When: Feb. 16th, 9 a.m.
Station: KEYE-TV
Segment: We Are Austin
Website: keyetv.com/features/we-are-austin
Photo courtesy of Raven + Lily.
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