Aditi Mayer: On Culture & the Crisis of Connection

Aditi Mayer is a Punjabi-American creative, born & raised in between Los Angeles and Orange County. Her work focuses on storytelling within the sustainable fashion space.

It was truly a treat to speak to Aditi, even as distant friends. We had met once before and I remember her smile opening across her face like the sun. Although we aren’t particularly well acquainted, I would call her a friend, as she’s someone everyone wants around: warm, genuine, well-spoken, creative, fashionable, curious. She was kind enough to take the time to speak to me on a hot, humid yet rainy day in India. I left our conversation feeling full. I hope you will too.

Tell me about your journey as a creative.

I work with a few different mediums: one is through content creation online, the other is through multimedia journalism, primarily long-form and photo, and I’m also getting into the documentary film world. I'd say the other part of my work is more so on the labour organizing front: With my practice in storytelling, I’m often thinking about ways that I can actually translate that into more of a tactile practice in terms of building community and what that means for addressing power structures. I've been in this space since about 2014, where I had quite the informal start. I was undergoing a really inspired and curious phase of my life at the start of my undergrad and decided to start a blog. Being on the internet in that way sort of spiralled into this whole rabbit hole of thinking about these topics, so by the time I graduated from university in 2019, I ended up doing this full-time.

At one point, you became a speaker on such topics. When did that happen? What do you hope that people will take away from your voice?

When I got involved in this work a while back, I was writing pieces online and getting into the content creation space. At that point, people started reaching out to invite me to speak at panels; since then, speaking engagements have become a large part of my work – ever since about 2017. As far as what I hope people take away from my voice: at its core, it really becomes about that balance between structural and historical context, but also deeply personal experiences and personal ties to this work. Injecting that is so, so important for me, also to show an example of why identity is so crucial in such discussions.

Ultimately, the goal is that everyone can join the climate justice movement and speak to it as far as what it means to them personally. So, there's that, but there’s also disrupting the current paradigm where we only talk about sustainability through the lens of carbon footprints, carbon emissions and carbon offsets. It is so quantitative to the point where you completely erase the human element of it all, which is so wild to me. The fact that I need to even mention that sustainability must include people, not just the planet, shows how the thinking around sustainability has been so binary - it's talking about polar bears and trees, but it's erasing the huge element of how we coexist with ecosystems. So, those are some of my goals with the speaking element of it all. Being a speaker in this space wasn't necessarily something I set out to do, but it's evolved naturally, and I really enjoy it. Especially “post-pandemic”, having the opportunity to be in spaces physically, has been really rejuvenating.

Can you speak to some topics I've come across when looking into your work: social and environmental justice in fashion, minority representation and responsible storytelling?

I think all those themes are deeply intertwined in terms of what they mean in practice. When it comes to social and environmental justice, I’m referring to interrogating existing power structures and what that means for the state of the planet and the climate crisis, but also how marginalized folks are disproportionately affected. My love for visuals and fashion as a vehicle for culture and storytelling came first, and then it became the leverage point to dive deep into climate justice. In that process, when it comes to minority representation, we know that fashion has a representation problem. That's been made pretty clear at this point in 2022. But the deeper part of that is the actual modalities through which fashion can operate in a more just way, so by that I mean: when we're thinking about fashion through a lens of labour, who is actually making these products and if we were to create fashion in a more sustainable way, aka decentralizing production, focusing on artists, crafts and indigenous forms of textiles, it's actually the “minorities”, people of the global majority, you could even say, folks of colour around the world and indigenous communities, that have the key of what sustainability looks like in practice. For me, it's really important to transcend this narrative of minority representation not just being about feeling seen when growing up, and instead, actually using that as a tool to ask: what cultures hold the key and how can we actually use ancestral wisdom and intergenerational knowledge transfer, to rethink how our systems are built? I see a lot of crises that we're facing at this moment, that our elders actually have a lot of wisdom on how to navigate.

As far as responsible storytelling, just like fashion, when you think about the world of journalism and media, we've also had a crisis on who has been telling stories. Having gone to school for journalism, I still recall reading only old white men's pieces. For context, I went to UC Irvine, where I studied Literary Journalism, and learned about things like long-form narrative. When doing so, I started thinking a lot about this idea of subjectivity versus objectivity - more importantly, that what we define as objectivity has usually been a white person's subjectivities. By that I mean this idea of parachuting into communities, not having adequate social or cultural context, and being quite extractive in that storytelling process; you go there, you get your quotes and you essentially, just leave. That's why it's been so important for me as a storyteller, to contextualize my work in a very specific context. For example: yes, it is fashion, but it's predominantly looking at two spaces that I feel like I have more proximity to and knowledge of: one of those spaces is L.A., with the garment worker community, where my role as a journalist kind of intersects with my role as an organizer. And then the work I’m doing in India is both a professional endeavor and a very personal one too. When I mention talking to farmers in Punjab, these are quite literally family members as well, so it's kind of blurring that line between first-person proximity to something but also looking at it structurally. That's the point where all of these themes that come up in my work really come together. Identity and personal proximity to these issues is such an important element, and if you look at how we're taught to approach all of these subjects - this degree of distance between you and the subject, and remaining objective, is always encouraged and I really want to challenge that through my work.

How does your experience as a South Asian woman influence your perception of the various spheres that you engage with?

There's a lot that goes under the umbrella of sustainable fashion, but very early on, looking at the history of South Asia from a perspective of colonization and decolonization efforts within the nation is really tied to my fashion work. I’ve looked at things like the British Raj in India, which in many ways, was an empire of cotton, and how that affected modes of fashion production. For instance, Swadeshi, or the push for the village economy and resisting supporting the colonizer’s product, was a key element in our push for independence.

This past month, I've been talking to farmers in Punjab in Malwa, the Cotton Belt of Punjab. Some of these farmers are as old as 70 & 80, and they're speaking about the Green Revolution, which happened in the 1970s in Punjab, where companies like Monsanto came in and forced GMO seeds of certain types onto the farmers with the promise of higher yields. Many spoke about the introduction of pesticides going hand in hand with the degradation of land, to the increase of health issues in the community, but ultimately, creating monocultures with crops that were non-native to the region, displacing generational wisdom around indigenous plant varieties, seasonality, and more. The narrative around people's relationship to the land was suddenly profit-driven rather than coming from a more spiritual and emotional space. A lot of these elders actually trace this back to colonization; they mentioned their own grandparents’ experiences with the British Raj in India, specifically in the context of Punjab, where farmers were coerced to stop planting indigenous forms of cotton, and plant longer staple forms of cotton that would be shipped back to the UK to be processed in the mills of Lancashire. So, it’s really interesting to think about this whole paradigm of the colonizer-colonized relationship in regard to the work I’m currently doing, as it’s so deeply tied to thinking about cultural reclamation, self-sovereignty, native ecologies, and belonging to a culture that's had a very significant relationship to the land, that came from a place of personal connection and spirituality.

It’s been a very interesting journey being in Punjab right now, both in a professional and personal context. A lot of the elders I'm talking to, who are so passionate about protecting our culture, expressed that although they understand wanting to go abroad in terms of opportunity, it feels like people have no sense of the value of what we have here. People's relationship to the land ceases to exist. And so, what does that mean for our culture? I'm not here to preach on what anyone should do or where they should stay, but I think it begs a larger question of what grounds us as individuals. Is it solely profit-driven? Is it this narrative we've been fed, of opportunity only being in the West? And if so, do we need to reinvent that? It’s been this exploration of our very rich culture but also questioning what it means to be at this very critical juncture in terms of our planet. It’s also about what we choose to prioritize and what we seek out, and the answer is not going to be the same for anyone. For me, personally, growing up in LA, I know it's a very different experience in regard to the opportunities I've been afforded. I know this topic is one we have to look at carefully.

When we talk about the climate crisis, it's also a crisis of connection - our connection to culture, our connection to land, and our connection to each other. How we view labour is a really big element of it, and again, it's also a crisis of storytelling. We've been given a very narrow idea of how the world should and can operate, and approaching this work through a lens of a South Asian woman, has allowed me to think about alternative ways of storytelling, and question: what are the ways in which the world can function so that we can operate better with each other? That is one of the ways that South Asianness has lent itself to trying to understand sustainability through my own identity, but it's also applicable throughout the world because when you look at BIPOC cultures, it's a very similar narrative throughout. At its core, it’s about: what does it mean when you've belonged to a culture that's experienced so much extraction and exploitation? What does it mean to reorient yourself with that? And what does it actually mean to try and revive that in this day and space?

Photo: Aditi at the Joskai Studio [Assamese designer working with Assamese artisans]; by Anumeha Sinha

Can you introduce ADIMAY and speak to how it allows you to further explore your identity/heritage?

ADIMAY is the platform that really birthed this work in terms of exploring the intersections between style, sustainability and social justice. On the website, you can find editorial content, it's where I put upcoming events and there's also a shop directory. It’s this nice little home where everything is nestled - a more curated space where everything can live. It includes a lot of articles that I’ve published on other platforms.

In 2013, the Rana Plaza factory collapse happened in Bangladesh. I actually didn't hear about it until a few months later, but that was the catalyst to really start thinking about all of these topics like sustainable fashion. My platform really evolved alongside me as an individual. Those ties of thinking about storytelling but also structures very early on, led me to the momentum I gained in terms of doing speaking engagements, writing commissioned pieces, my photojournalism stuff and doing work in downtown LA. I feel very lucky because I started as a student, where I didn't necessarily have the pressures of monetizing the platform from the onset. It truly came from a place of passion and curiosity, and I was lucky enough to have that evolve into a career path.

Now, most of my work actually exists more so on Instagram, just because I feel that’s how people primarily consume content at this moment. But this blog of mine really helped me focus on being in conversation with other designers, especially South Asian designers. And I want to stress that India by no means is a monolith. I'm always very specific with the context of Punjabi culture and practices, but it's really great to be in conversation with designers in Assam, for example. It’s been really powerful to see our shared history, but also the different nuances that frame people's work in this space - and even outside of South Asia, my main intention is to engage with folks that are truly challenging what sustainability has meant and where it's now going. I don't ever want to be at a point where I'm stopping my own learning and growing journey.

What are some issues or stereotypes that you believe need to be addressed and dismantled in regard to the environmental and social justice space?

At a very rudimentary level, it's who we're allowing you to tell these stories. That's what the role of Instagram has been in terms of democratizing access for young, BIPOC folks to occupy a space in the climate justice movement. I can tell you, just from how many years I’ve been in this space, that the language of white supremacy, the language of colonization and decolonization, were very much uncomfortable words or topics to bring up in more traditional spaces. But now, you look at the IPCC report that the UN released last year: they're attributing colonization as a key foundation to today’s climate crisis. And that's not to say any one person is responsible for that; BIPOC folks have been saying that for ages, and it didn't have to take a white, traditional institution to validate that work. It shows that as a culture, we are beginning to interrogate the root of these issues, rather than focus on Band-Aid solutions. So, fundamentally, a big part of it is thinking about and shifting who's been telling these stories and how we should interrogate why certain narratives are being left out. It's one thing to say ‘representation’, but it's another thing to say: ‘why is it that XYZ is the first person in this space from this background?’

Are there any special, personal pieces that have been passed down from your family?

Just a few months back, my mom gave me a ring that belonged to my paternal grandmother, that was gifted to her by her grandfather, who was a goldsmith. It’s this beautiful ring that he hand carved with this hot pink ruby in it. I wear it every day. Between my paternal and maternal side, one is a lineage of artisans and the other is lineage of farmers, which is such a special tactile space to be a part of in terms of family history. My grandfather was a farmer and completely transformed our very dead backyard into a beautiful little haven when he came to live with us. My grandmother was such a skilled artisan - I loved seeing her practices when she would make us blankets. My relationship with Punjab was very much tied to seeing India through a time capsule of my grandparents. It was a very specific India that I heard stories about. I think we tend to romanticize the motherland as well, but when you grow up in a different country, and still belong to a different identity, those time capsules through your elders become so precious to you.

I'm also in Punjab right now, staying with family from my maternal side. We opened up a trunk recently and found a bunch of dhurrie, which are basically hand woven rugs. The cotton tends to be picked from one's own household, turned into string by the charka and woven by the woman. In terms of tapestries that have quite literally been passed down from generations, I feel really thankful that my folks chose to just keep them.

In what ways has your own sense of fashion or style been influenced by South Asian design and textiles?

I’ve become such a nerd for understanding textiles, especially natural textiles that grow in very specific contexts. They are so beautiful to touch, no synthetic fabric can ever compare because you see the labor that goes into it - from the farmer to the hand loom weaving. I truly love looking at fabrics from that perspective, taking into account the labor and the ecologies behind it. Since I have a background as a photographer, I’ve always really loved looking at texture and movement, even before I even got into the fashion space and began looking at textiles, natural dyeing or embroidery.

In terms of silhouettes, I love the balance of movement oriented pieces but also really strong, structured pieces. You'll see my own personal wardrobe consists almost exclusively of South Asian designers just because we’re such masters, especially in things like upcycling. I could see this clearly when I was talking to artisans this past week, in terms of them taking all their scrap fabrics and creating quilts out of it. These ideas that we talk about, like circular economy, have existed for a very long time in our own cultures. And so I always say, for me, sustainability has never been about reinventing the wheel. It's quite literally been a journey of understanding my own personal family and cultural history. It’s just following the lead of what is already there.

Tell me about the documentary you’re currently working on.

I've been working on it for the last five years. It's about a 91-year-old Punjabi woman named Mohanjeet Grewal that lives in Paris. I feel like she’s almost had a parallel journey to mine in some strange way. She experienced Partition when she was young, got a scholarship to come to L.A., where she did her graduate degree, worked as a journalist and then ended up in Paris, where she started her own sustainable fashion label. She focused on artisans and rediscovered India for herself whilst being acutely aware that she didn't want this to exist for a white imagination, despite being based in Paris. I found her when I was 19, studying abroad during my time at UCLA, funnily enough. We just had this natural friendship that evolved. And then I decided to make this film, which is not a talking head piece about her life - it’s more a portrait of intergenerational friendship, all of the things that frame us and the inquiries we have. Despite her being 91, she's still grappling with a lot of the questions that folks of our generation are questioning - questions of identity, legacy, sustainability, etc. This project has been an ongoing work in progress because it comes from such a personal space. I can't tell you the end of this film per se, as it's quite literally a portrait of something very personal. I don't know when it will come out. But it means so much to me.

What are your hopes/dreams/visions for the future of your work?

Everything that I'm doing now - between storytelling, organizing and building community in a more tactile way, I want to continue doing that. When I look to the future, I can't tell you a concrete goal, but I just feel so lucky to have identified the themes that I'm passionate about, the ones that drive me towards something greater. It's really about deepening my practice with those themes that I know I love and being in India is a very big step within all that.