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Charlize Theron exudes beauty. At 5'10" the statuesque actress, with the sky-high cheekbones, lands on our list of girl crushes not just for her ever-classic, effortless style but also because her true beauty isn’t just skin deep. In 2007, the Oscar-winning South African and American star founded the Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Project (CTAOP) to support African youth in the fight again HIV and AIDS. This week she once again teams up with Tom’s founder, Blake Mycoskie to launch their third collaboration benefiting CTAOP. At the private dinner to celebrate the new collection, the longtime friends spoke exclusively to Glamour about how it all began (spoiler alert: they disagree on the details!), and Charlize shares with us how she’s pairing her low-key summertime style with some mega-lofty world-changing goals (think eradicating HIV and AIDS by 2030!).
Glamour: This is your third collaboration. Tell us how it all started.
Charlize: I think we have like very different stories…
Blake: I’ll let you go first.
Charlize: Well I was really enthralled by what Blake was doing with Toms. The idea behind CTAOP was always to find great partners to work together. I was very creepily stalking Blake and reading about all this amazing work that he was doing, and his business model was so smart and innovative, and the more I read about him, and the fact that he was such a searcher, and that he loved to travel the world, and he wanted to know about people and live in cultures, was something that I was really impressed by. So we organized a dinner in Los Angeles, at this little Japanese restaurant, and I remember I was nervous to meet him…
Blake: So ridiculous.
Charlize: It’s so not ridiculous! He was like super tan, and he looked like Tarzan, like you couldn’t cast a better actor to play the role of Blake, and literally they had to kick us out of the restaurant. We could not stop talking…the conversation just flowed, and we just decided then and there that we wanted to do something together, and that was in 2009…
Blake: From my perspective, Toms is like three years old, and we get a call that says, ‘Charlize wants to have dinner with you to talk about a partnership,’ and you’re like, ‘Come on, really?!’ What’s cool about it is it’s seven years later, and we’re still at it and still working together and trying to use our respective platforms to try to do even more.
Glamour: Whom does the collaboration benefit, and what’s the goal?
Charlize: The collaboration is about finding a way to support the grassroots organizations that are focused on prevention care when it comes to HIV and AIDS. [With] CTAOP, we spent about a year doing a lot of research and actually going to South Africa and spending a lot of time on the ground with these organizations within the communities that are the hardest hit, places where 50 percent of the youth were HIV positive, and what we realized was that the answer to ending AIDS and reaching the really truly vulnerable was through grassroots organizations. They were living there with them. They saw it firsthand, so our partnerships are really focused on that.
Glamour: Why is fighting HIV and AIDS important to you?
Charlize: It’s pretty impossible to be a South African and not have been personally affected by HIV or AIDS. I remember very vividly being around eight years old and seeing people die around me. Not knowing what that was and being incredibly scared, and nobody could really give you a straight answer, and as a young girl, that really affected me tremendously. The luckier I got in my life, the more blessed I became, I realized that I was given opportunities where I could really cause change, where I could really step in and maybe make a difference. Too many people have died so unnecessarily; AIDS is completely preventable, yet it’s killing more kids in South Africa then everything else, and that’s just not how it should be.
Glamour: Tell us about #GenEndIt.
Charlize: #GenEndIt is a global space, where everybody can come together on a virtual level to really be very active, outspoken and empowering, to create this unified message and inspire this generation to see the end of AIDS, which is something that a lot of us truly believe—and a lot of our partners and organizations that we work with believe [is possible], including the UN, which believes that we can do this by 2030. That collective spirit is so incredibly powerful, and I think that’s what’s needed right now very desperately because we’re so close; we can be the generation to stop this, or things could drastically change, and we can go back to a place where all of the work that we’ve done in the last thirty years won’t even matter.
Glamour: What was the design process like for the new collection? Was it a true collaboration?
Charlize: It’s incredibly collaborative. For us, it’s just a real appreciation for the CTAOP logo. It’s a visual that evokes that instant, immediate idea that one thing can make many other things happen. I just think everything that Toms does is so cool. I’m a fan, so there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to come in and be like, ‘You know what? We should do a high boot.’ I love the stuff that they do, so it really is just figuring out a way we can marry the two together. It’s exciting to see what we’ve achieved and how we can push that envelope and do it better every year.
Glamour: The backpack is a new addition to the collection this year. Whose idea was that?
Charlize: We all talked about it. We always travel everywhere, and you’re walking around with this bag, and you’re kind of like, ‘Why don’t I have some cool Toms backpack that says something?’ And so, I was like, ‘That would be really cool if we could do that.’
Blake: The bags are about starting a conversation. The backpack is a visual billboard on your back, and I’m hoping that a lot of young people, especially students, are buying the bag and wearing it and carrying their books in it because your backpack is a part of your identity as a student. If this is being carried and seen on campuses everyday, then that’s going to create more conversation, which leads to #GenEndIt.
Glamour: Speaking of travel Charlize, what are you going to be wearing this summer, and what are your tips for staying stylish on vacation?
Charlize: I’ve been doing like three movies back to back, and last year I did the same thing, and I didn’t take a summer holiday, so I’ve decided this year, starting next Wednesday, after the World AIDS Conference in Durban, I’m taking a month and a half off. So my summer wear will be pajamas, bathing suits, flip-flops, and anything that I can get dirty and take a nap in at the same time. And of course, always my Toms!
What can you do to help prevent HIV and AIDS? To join the conversation, use #GenEndIt
Unrelated but also awesome: watch model Barbie Ferreira get real about body-shaming.
