Actress Blake Lively recently launched a website called Preserve, which aims to promote an artisanal lifestyle through the posting of recipes, craft projects, and style profiles, and to sell a variety of food and clothing items. Because Preserve genuinely desires “to give back to those with fewer opportunities but just as much heart and soul as anyone else” they will donate 5% of every purchase to a charity that helps American children.
This practice of giving while getting, made popular by companies like Warby Parker and Toms, has become a mainstay for the types of folks Lively is targeting with her site. I’m talking about that particular slice of the upper-middle class educated elite, a generation of young adults found mostly in the hipper precincts of Brooklyn, New York, and Portland, Oregon. They — and, admittedly, sometimes, I — seek a more authentic, genuine existence and often try to achieve this through consumption, whether through the purchase of free-trade, small-batch coffee or chocolate, using locally made bicycles or a buying pair of reading glasses from a site that automatically donates a pair to someone in need.
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