During quarantine, many people have become reacquainted with some of the simpler pleasures in life: puzzling, board games, and the like. Now Manolo and Kristina Blahnik are contributing the chicest coloring book imaginable into the mix as part of the company’s SMILE project, launched last year. “Smiling has many proven health benefits and we wanted to share some of what we have found is helping us,” writes Kristina from her dining room-turned–home office in Sussex.
This is not an all fun-and-games project, though. Like COVID-19, mental illness is an invisible affliction, and this effort is designed to support the valiant efforts of England’s Mental Health Foundation and, says Kristina, draw attention to the organization’s “specific guidance on how to deal the mental health impacts that the pandemic is having, from management tips to acts of kindness.”