Jessica Alba comes by her charitable impulse honestly.
JESSICA ALBA GIVES US THE SCOOP ON THE HONEST COMPANY’S NEW DIAPER LINE, A COLLABORATION WITH THE GREAT. BY SAMANTHA YANKS
Jessica Alba cofounded The Honest Company in 2012 to offer family-friendly, ecoconscious products and to pursue a mission of 100 percent accountability. This month the brand debuted a collaboration with stylists and designers Emily Current and Meritt Elliott of The Great. The Great Adventure diaper collection features autumnal prints, including the Camper Plaid, the Sweet Scout, the Great Adventure, and the Bandana. On August 5, they celebrated the launch at a private residence in East Hampton, benefiting the nonprofit organization Baby2baby (baby2baby.org), which provides low-income families with diapers, kids’ clothing, and other basic necessities. At the event, guests signed a pledge, and for every signature, The Honest Company donated diapers to Baby2baby. Since its inception, The Honest Company has given over 4 million diapers and more than 405,000 wipes, personal care items, cleaning products, vitamins, and gear to Baby2baby, on whose board Alba serves (alongside Rachel Zoe and Molly Sims). We talked to Alba about the launch.
How did you hook up with Emily and Meritt? I was a fan. I followed them on Instagram and I thought they had great personal style, and I was a huge fan of Current Elliott, the first brand that they built. So I had started working with them as my styling team. And they’re entrepreneurs and they’re mommies, so we were always chatting about business, work, how we try to figure out how to prioritize our time, and then we always would come around to “Wouldn’t it be cool to do something together?” We just kept talking about it for years, and finally it was the perfect time for us at The Honest Company to do this type of collaboration, and they had two babies around the same time. How did you decide on the theme for the Great Adventure collection? We thought about fall trends… It was really approached from a fashion perspective, and with their brand The Great, they celebrate America, being outdoors, and adventures, so we thought, What better setting than the Hamptons to launch? It’s so beautiful and it’s known for the beauty of nature. The diaper patterns are so spot-on trendwise. We started out with a bunch of concepts and we threw the ideas out to our Facebook fans, and our diaper subscribers told us what they love. Then those reactions drove the overall theme. We designed 50 diapers all within the theme, and then the Facebook fans chose what should be a boys’, girls’, or gender-neutral design, and that’s how we chose the patterns. And then we refined from there into a cohesive collection. So the five that you ended up with, tell me a little bit about those. I think the boy prints—i think all of them can be used on boys or girls because diapers are really for the mom—but the plaid is really sweet, and so are the little creatures. And the main print, with the tents, celebrating old school, Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, outdoor adventure. There’s a pink bandana, which is a classic thing, and we do a fresh, modern take on it by making it this really sweet color. And then there’s a denim print—we really love denim, kids look great in denim, so how do you do a cute denim print? And that one has little animals. And you are on the board of Baby2baby? Yes, we give a percentage to Baby2baby. We support other nonprofits, but that’s our key one, the one that we’ve been working with since day one. The giveback is so important! The Great Adventure diaper collection debuts in stores and online at Honest.com for subscribers on August 21; nonsubscribers can shop the collection online starting on August 28.
“WE DESIGNED 50 DIAPERS, AND THEN THE FACEBOOK FANS CHOSE WHAT SHOULD BE A BOYS’, GIRLS’, OR GENDER-NEUTRAL DESIGN.”— jessica alba