One Fashion Designer’s Quest to End Child Marriage, One Scarf at a Time

Henriette Ernst’s idea formed over the summer, after a fateful walk in Lower Manhattan with her Morkie, an ewok-like cross between a Yorkshire terrier and a Maltese. She was joined by a neighbor she’d recently met named Yasmeen Hassan, a human-rights lawyer and global executive director for Equality Now. Over the course of a couple of hours, the two talked about many of the issues Hassan works on: rape cases, genital mutilation, child marriage, education for girls. Ernst became increasingly agitated by the discussion—and energized. “I said, ‘You know what? Maybe I can do something,’ ” she recalls. “ ‘Maybe I can make coffee for your organization, or organize an event, or be a volunteer.’ ”

Ernst has sparkly dark eyes and brown hair, and she brims with energy and opinions, spoken in a thick German accent that gives her declamations the delightfully contradictory air of a pragmatic diva. For decades she’d been a design director, most recently as senior vice president for women’s clothes at Joe Fresh, helping labels meet relentless retail demands for all things new. At the time she met with Hassan, she was taking a break from the industry to contemplate her next career move. “I also felt a little bit sick of the superficiality of the fashion world,” she says.