100 Percent of Proceeds From This Eyewear Collection Go to the Children of Flint

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At the very start of 2016, the city of Flint, Michigan was declared to be in a state of emergency by its governor, before being declared a federal state of emergency by President Barack Obama less than two weeks later. The city’s water supply was contaminated with lead.

Flint had been experiencing contamination issues as early as 2014 — due to a change in water source — leaving the city’s children most at risk. (Over 10,000 children were exposed to drinking water with high levels of lead, leading to a range of serious health problems.) Wes Stoody, the founder of eyewear company Article One and longtime Flint resident, felt the need to act.

“As our team learned more about what exactly was happening to our water supply, we knew we had to take action any way we could to help our community,” shares Stoody. And with that, the brand decided to design and launch a Flint capsule collection, with 100 percent of the profits going directly to The Community Foundation of Greater Flint, an organization dedicated to long-term solutions for the health and development of Flint's youth.

Article One — which was originally created to raise awareness and funding for Vitamin A deficiency in developing nations — has charity in its DNA, so developing the capsule collection came as a no-brainer to the team. “The community of Flint is the toughest and most resilient group of people we know,” says Stoody. “And although the nation's attention is no longer focused on the water crisis, we will continue to build up our community from within.”

The collection itself is made up of six different sunglasses, and like all Article One pieces, are made by hand in a family-owned factory in Northern Italy, with the finest Italian Mazzucchelli acetate. (Sounds fancy, is fancy.) Each pair rings in at $200, and comes branded with a special redesign of the signature logo plaque in the shape of a water drop to symbolize the cause.

For an even more personal touch, the brand enlisted a team of local “Flint Role Models” to star in the capsule’s debut campaign, from local teachers to activists to entrepreneurs, and even children.

“We’ve been so excited by the reactions of our customers regarding the Flint Collection,” Stoody says. “When creating this capsule, we wanted our customers to be enthralled by the design and details of the sunglasses as well as the reason behind their creation.” The brand is currently a quarter of the way to its $40,000 goal. To help, you can shop the Flint Collection and learn more about Article One’s story here.