Chinese Laundry Partners With the American Heart Association For ‘Wear Your Heart’ Charitable Campaign Featuring the Heartful Heel Sandal
Chinese Laundry and the American Heart Association want you to “Wear Your Heart” on your shoes — and not just because of fast-approaching Valentine’s Day.
The enduring footwear brand and the non-profit have partnered up to release a new shoe, the limited-edition Heartful Heel Sandal, as part of a charitable campaign called “Wear Your Heart” which is raising money for heart disease. Specifically focusing on women’s heart health, the campaign stars three survivors wearing the sandal.
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Launching Feb. 1 in tandem with the start of American Heart Month, 30% of the proceeds from each Heartful Heel Sandal will be given to AHA’s Life Is Why campaign, with a minimum of $40,000 committed to be donated. The donations support heart health research, awareness and education programs made in particular for women. In addition to that, Chinese Laundry’s parent company CELS Brands will implement an online in-cart donation feature so that customers buying anything from Chinese Laundry, Dirty Laundry, CL By Laundry and 42 Gold can support the cause.
Ahead of the campaign launch, Chinese Laundry’s chief marking officer Sarah Zurrell spoke with Footwear News about the new initiative.
“As a CMO, and throughout my career, I always want to figure out how we can have corporate responsibility and give back,” Zurrell said. “So I essentially reached out to [AHA] and got connected and started to build a relationship and figure out how we could really go deep on doing something that would be meaningful — and kind of share audiences and tap into our huge customer base and all of our fans, who are primarily women, to really be able to get the message out that your heart is important, your health is important.”
For the leadership at Chinese Laundry, which is a brand belonging to the family-owned business CELS Brands, the issue of heart disease is a personal one. The “Wear Your Heart” campaign honors CELS’ co-founder Carol Goldman, who recently passed away at the age of 81.
Zurrell shared, “The truth is, it’s in loving memory of Carol Goldman, who’s the former CMO of Chinese laundry, and she’s the beloved wife of our CEO, Robert Goldman, and adoring mother of our COO and president of sales, Stewart Goldman and Lauren Goldman and Alex Goldman, and then their daughter, who passed away, the late Elise Goldman.”
As noted in an official release for the campaign, heart disease remains the leading cause of death for women in the United States, with more than 44% of women who are 20 and older affected by it. Zurrell and the team at Chinese Laundry want to do their part to help save lives.
The campaign spotlights three survivors including competitive figure skater and entrepreneur Toshawa Andrews, who has survived 12 heart attacks and is a women’s health advocate; Zuleyma Santos, a mother of two awaiting a heart transplant who carries a battery pack daily to support her surgically implanted device; and Kelsey Muir, who was born with a missing ventricle and now is a new mom who advocates for heart health and proudly wears a pacemaker.
Zurrell said of the women, “They’re all so special. We worked hand in hand with the American Heart Association, and wanted to identify these three incredible survivors that all have very different stories and have been impacted and experienced heart disease — and survived through it through the great work of the American Heart Association, through the great work of people that have both put time and money and effort into saving lives.”
She added, “We went through a lot of different options, and just kind of fell in love with these three. And wanted to spread the message of hope, because this campaign is about hope — it’s about how we can really prevent losing lives by just raising awareness and taking the steps.”
As for the Heartful Heel Sandal’s design, the mule features two rhinestone-embellished bands stretching across the foot, each emblazoned with red hearts; it also features a sole outlined in red and a red block heel.
Zurrell offered some insight into the design process that led to the creation of the eye-catching Heartful Heel sandal, which retails for $79.95.
“Robert Goldman, our CEO, and myself worked really closely with our incredible Chinese Laundry line builder and footwear designer Shayna Fitzpatrick, to create just a really unique shoe that we thought would be fun and easy to wear, and have a nice, easy heel height of 2.75 inches, that rounded toe,” she said.
She continued, “We wanted it to sparkle because we wanted it to really signify life and all like the beautiful moments that we have. And we wanted to just make it super fun. This fun, must-have emotional vibe because we’re telling emotional stories. Let’s create a shoe that says, ‘I am here to help stop heart disease. And there are these adorable hearts on my shoes, and they sparkle.'”
In closing, Zurrell told FN, “We feel like this cause is so close to our heart. And as a brand that’s been around for 53 years, and really made a mark on the lives of women in America, we just want to make sure that we’re giving back however we can.”
In addition to supporting those affected by heart disease, the company has donated 15,000 pairs of shoes to people impacted by the wildfires in Los Angeles. Looking ahead, the team will focus on advocating for mental health, people graduating from the foster care system and people experiencing housing instability.
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