In August, Dahna Goldstein, a 44-year-old entrepreneur and mother of one, was feeling frustrated. She was glued to the coming midterm elections, following myriad candidates and the rising tide of disrupters around the country, and she wanted to take what had become a focus of her personal life and include it in her professional life.

She wanted a message tee — or something like it, anyway — that she could wear in a boardroom. She didn’t want to leave her wardrobe politics to the weekends.

“There was this huge disconnect between what I was feeling going on around me in the country and what was going on in my work life,” Ms. Goldstein said.

She complained to her friend Alexandra Posen, an artist who is the sister of the designer Zac Posen and who was the creative director of his company until 2010.