This local designer went from creating luxury handbags to teaming up with DJ Khaled to raise funds
Just a few weeks ago, Gelareh Mizrahi was selling luxury handbags from her eponymous shop in the Miami Design District. Now, she’s raising money and working with her friends at the We the Best Foundation and Direct Relief to get face masks and other vital equipment to doctors battling the coronavirus.
“To see all these people coming together—pulling resources, pulling intelligence, pulling their time and effort—to try and help them is so powerful,” said the Miami Beach designer. “These doctors aren’t at it alone.”
The We the Best Foundation, led by DJ Khaled and Nicole Tuck, announced Tuesday that it is partnering with nonprofit Direct Relief to provide masks, gloves and other personal protective equipment (PPE) to hospitals in Miami and New York—all items that have become hard to come by for healthcare professionals. The initiative kicks off today.
“Helping our local community when and where we can has always been our mission since we started the We The Best Foundation back in 2018,” Khaled said in a press release. “It’s important to take care of those who take care of us.”
In philanthropic fashion
Mizrahi, a mother of two in Miami Beach, connected with Khaled and his family as their sons attend the same preschool. A graduate of Parsons School of Design, she’s known for creating tiny purses and whimsical clutches that have been seen in the hands of celebrities like Hailey Bieber and even Kylie Jenner’s toddler, Stormi.
As news was circulating of coronavirus bringing China and Italy to its knees, Mizrahi was concerned about the virus early on, canceling her team’s trip to Paris Fashion Week in February and then closing her store two weeks later. On top of that, she was hearing from her brother, the chief resident at a New York City hospital, about the face mask and glove shortages that healthcare providers were facing.
Having contacts at Chinese factories, she researched the cost to produce N95 masks—a mask that can block up to 95 percent of particles when worn correctly. Mizrahi ordered $3,500 of masks, face shields and eye goggles and created a GoFundMe fundraiser. Since launching the page last week, she has raised more than $35,000. On her Instagram account, she has been sharing stories from healthcare providers who have reached out to her.
“I have been bombarded with people in my Instagram DMs from every hospital in New York, from the richest to the poorest, saying, ‘We don’t have equipment,’” she said.
With hospitals overwhelmed with coronavirus patients, medical professionals have been working without the supply of protection they are used to. Often, doctors and nurses are having to reuse the single-use masks, gowns and goggles while treating contagious patients. Designers such as Christian Siriano have stepped up by enlisting their sewing teams to create cloth masks to go over N95 masks, helping prolong their use.
In her mission, Mizrahi has also met others who are concerned, people who are working together to fundraise and make sure the correct resources are getting to medical professionals. But as her fundraising continued, Mizrahi said she knew she couldn’t tackle the problem alone, so she reached out to Khaled. By working with Direct Relief, a nonprofit assisting those threatened by disaster, disease and poverty, she felt they would be working with “a vetted source who knows what they’re doing.”
“It’s awesome to see everyone coming together, it’s amazing,” Mizrahi says.
Follow Gelareh Mizrahi on Instagram at @gelarehmizrahi.