her story | inspirations | gratitude
Our company, hiroko kurihara designs wants to make a difference in the world in at least three ways:
- create unique, well-crafted textiles;
- build responsibility and conscientiousness in consumption; and
- foster a model of responsible authentic corporate citizenry.
Our vision is to create a profitable socially responsible company that offers unique high quality textile creations. We strive to foster conscientious consumerism, encouraging people to consider the global and local impact of all their purchasing decisions.
We realized that there were few options in finding lightweight woolen blankets and certainly nothing that reflected our appreciation for high quality, unique designs that were responsibly created. We also felt the need to create a business model of direct giving that went beyond corporate community involvement. So we created our blanket · shares · project.
hiroko kurihara
1965: Born in Germany to my Japanese Father and German Mother I am still a Japanese citizen and a permanent resident of the US. After studying textiles design at the Rhode Island School of Design, like most art students I headed to NYC. On most mornings as I left for work I would see the man who was living underneath my front stoop, sometimes we said hello.
I wanted to see if there was something I could do for my neighbor so one blustery evening I attended a forum on homelessness at the Dia Art Foundation. I realized that the global political economy of the textiles labor industry was indeed, in many ways, connected to homelessness in the United States.
