Compassionate Capitalist

Kenneth Cole at BIFF

Fashion might seem frivolous—after all, how does wearing the right shoe, in the right color, make a world driven by dissent any better? But for the past 40 years, designer Kennth Cole has used his platform as a fashion guru to provide provocative commentary on controversial issues through his company’s advertising.

“I was able to marry all of my personal and the brand’s sentiments together in our messaging,” he said. “In light of this new world, this new administration, it’s important that a business steps up and has a more wholistic relationship with our community. We can rely on the government less and less.”

Cole has long been known as the “compassionate capitalist.” Now his history of social activism will be spotlighted on the opening night of the 2025 Berkshire International Film Festival on Thursday, May 29th, when BIFF presents the documentary, A Man With Sole: The Impact of Kenneth Cole.

In announcing the opening night programming, BIFF artistic director Kelley Vickery said, “At this moment in history where rights and freedoms are being dismantled, we are thrilled to be opening with a story of true activism and compassion ….”

Cole and Tony Award-winning director Dori Berinstein will be in attendance for a Q&A following the screening, slated for 7PM at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center.

Cole’s history of activism began in the 1980s when the AIDS epidemic was ravaging the gay community. Alarmed by the inaction of politicians and policymakers, Cole began to use messaging on his billboards and t-shirts to urge awareness in the larger community, giving voice to an urgent need through ads that were culturally relevant.

“It’s not just about how many shoes or suits or bottles of fragrance can we sell and to whom. It's how do we impact people's lives?” he has been quoted as saying.

AIDS was his first campaign but not the last. Cole went on to advocate for human rights, homelessness, social justice, LGBTQIA+ rights, gun control and now mental health.

In a recent phone interview he said that when he decides to advocate for an issue his first goal is to “have a grassroots understanding of what is the message. Right now, polarization is overwhelming us. We try to make what we do relevant.”

Referring to the Birenstein film, he said he had been approached several times by those who wanted to profile his long career and activism but he had not jumped at the chance. Then when veteran Broadway producer Birenstein reached out, he reconsidered. It was a happy choice and reviewers and critics have praised the film's exploration of how Cole's business success intertwined with his philanthropic efforts.

“Filmmakers had reached out to me intermittently and I basically—after a little thought—decided it is story that people can benefit from understanding. I thought it would be more ‘runway and fashion’ but it ended up more about social impact and I am appreciative of that. Lots of fashion industry stories have been told, but the story (Berinstein) told is unique in many ways.”

Cole’s career is, indeed, unique. The son of a small shoe manufacturer he decided not to enter the family business, opting instead to study law. “My father had a small shoe factory and had an assistant who had just left. There was a familial need at the proverbial hand that fed us. I was on my way to law school but I thought I should learn the business. That was my first mistake.”

Together he and his father, Charles, created Candie’s footwear in 1978. The line’s iconic high-heeled wooden-soled slide skyrocketed in popularity in the 1980s with one in four women in America owning a pair. Kenneth Cole took over the Candie's line and expanded it into other product categories but by 1982 he decided to leave his father’s business to establish Kenneth Cole Productions.

“When I started, it was a small company and then it became a not-so-small company,” he said. “We started with women’s footwear, then men’s and some kids.”

Today, his global company creates clothing and other products under the labels Kenneth Cole New York, Reaction Kenneth Cole and Unlisted, as well as footwear under the label Gentle Souls.
Launching his own business required ingenuity and persistence. In the early days he famously hawked his line from a trailer parked two blocks from the New York Shoe Expo at the New York Hilton.

As the story goes, he was unable to afford a hotel room or showroom to display his items during the Expo so Cole inquired about parking a trailer two blocks from the Hilton Hotel. Permits for trailers were only granted to utility and production companies so Cole changed the name of his company from Kenneth Cole Incorporated to Kenneth Cole Productions and applied for a permit to film a full-length film, The Birth of a Shoe Company. In two and a half days Kenneth Cole Productions sold 40,000 pairs of shoes while chronicling the beginning of the company on film.

Forty-three years later, he is still involved in both branding and product. It is not hard to determine what the public wants, he said. The trick is to give it to them with a twist.

“If you are out there, you get a sense of where things are and where they are going. The goal is to understand what they want and give it to them but not as they expected.”

In 1994, Kenneth Cole Productions went public and was included on Forbes annual list of the 200 Best Small Companies four times through 2008. Then in 2012 Cole acquired all its shares, taking the company private again. The deal valued the company at approximately $280 million.

Being a private company again makes his activism easier. “Some (stockholders) would challenge what we were doing,” he explained. “(My attitude was,) ‘This is what we did before you bought the shares and will after you.”

In an era when expressing an unpopular opinion can irrevocably damage a performer or a business, Cole has been steadfast in standing by his campaigns. “Throughout the years, there has been backlash,” he said, “but we have gotten more than we lost. The people who support our messaging are less inclined to scream and shout than those who oppose it and the stakeholders have supported us.”

He said that some of his campaigns have been taken on after his firm was approached by stakeholders but once embraced his commitment is firm. “I was very much committed to the HIV campaign and did that for 30 years,” he recalled. “I was the chairman of amFAR (Foundation for AIDS Research) for two years. We were approached about mental health and I am a founder of the Mental Health Coalition. I was on the Board of Director for the Sundance Film Festival for 18 years—these are commitments we make and stick with them.”

For tickets to A Man with Sole Click here