Article22 (named after the 22nd article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) was founded in 2010 by Elizabeth Suda, a Coach alum and activist who was moved by the resourcefulness of Laotian farmers and artisans who found positive uses for the detritus of war. Sustainability and responsibility are the core values of the brand, which donates funds to support community-based farmers and entrepreneurs in Laos and to help MAG (Mines Advisory Group) clear the land.
Several years ago, one of Article22’s slogans caught Lindvall’s eye, “I think they were saying, ‘Peace is the bomb,’ and I was just really inspired by the idea of taking melted-down shrapnel from war and turning it into jewelry,” she says.
Lindvall reached out to the company, and last year the team invited her to work with them. Suda tells Vogue: “Angela shares our adventurous spirit—she lived on a houseboat in NYC!—and has been an early advocate for sustainability and wellness.
Working together has felt natural; we share the belief in personal responsibility and the idea of small daily positive actions adding up.”
Self-care and self-love are central to Lindvall’s ethos. “It’s been a journey,” she says on the phone from California. Discovered at 14 at a Kansas City fashion show, she moved to New York at about 18 and achieved enormous success, including three Vogue cover credits. She struggled with the industry’s focus on the external, however. “I’m extremely grateful for all of the opportunities fashion has given me,” Lindvall asserts, “but I was never really a fashionista—I was a total tomboy growing up.”
Her mission to save the planet dates to her move to New York. “I really started to question, ‘Where does all our trash go? What’s in our food?’ I just started asking all these questions and was kind of mind-blown by the canary in the coal mine of environmental issues.” Through her fashion life, Lindvall understood the power of the media and popular culture, and tried to yoke them to green to promote sustainability. “This was before the word green was even coined,” Lindvall notes, “at the time, people knew more about what color Britney Spears’s underwear was, or the Louis Vuitton handbag, and a lot of people rolled their eyes at me.”
Tragedy altered her course of action, somewhat. The death of her sister, coupled with a divorce, gave Lindvall pause: “All of a sudden, I was like, Okay, I’m trying to save the planet and my world’s falling apart. This doesn’t make sense. I can’t do anything until I heal myself, so that’s kind of where my path of being an environmentalist, which I still am, took a deeper route into this idea of self-care/healing the planet.” Lindvall’s next step, inspired by the Article22 collaboration, is to create a “peace campaign” tied to the product, which transforms remnants of war into something beautiful. “I liked the idea of my message being ‘Peace begins with me,’ ” says Lindvall. “There are so many things in the world that are overwhelming—socially, environmentally, politically, economically—and [I want to focus on what we] as individuals can do on a daily basis to create peace within ourselves and then project that to others. Our human potential is amazing.”
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