Posing with hands framing her face or with a soft gaze angled toward the camera as if lit from within, climate activist Aditi Mayer never misses a moment to spotlight artisanal talent.
Mayer has been at the intersection of sustainable fashion since learning of the Rana Plaza factory collapse that killed 1,134 garment workers 10 years ago come April 24. Her photojournalism work has been spotlighted by National Geographic (where she is a 2022 fellow), and her writings appear on Adimay.com, Vogue and many other outlets.
“My origin in the space, Rana Plaza, came from a place of a very dark reality of the dominant fashion model. Being a South Asian woman, it affected me in a different way,” she said over a Zoom interview. “My work has evolved in the last decade to embed art, beauty and culture to reimagine this new reality as well.”
Putting her journalism degree from the University of California Irvine to work, Mayer walks the tightrope of fashion, influence and activism.
“For me, I always say I see fashion as my Trojan horse to talk about climate justice,” she said. “My origins from fashion came from a lens of labor justice. Sustainability for me is an interrogation of power. And fashion is my chosen lens to unpack that.”
She’s sought to push the boundary for years, documenting firsthand the growing demands for labor rights in Los Angeles’ garment district that began with organizing at the Ross headquarters and wound up in the passage of SB62 (the Garment Worker Protection Act passed in California in 2021).
Today, she’s striving for the balance between driving the discourse and also funding the work.
“I think there has been, in my own experience, a shift in the past year, [with brands] approaching us to consult internally about supply chains or holistic education,” Mayer said.
She’s indeed shifted gears back to her roots, focusing more on journalistic storytelling which re-centers artisans and farmers in the conversation. Her family comes from Punjab (the region that is responsible for around 80 percent of India’s agricultural export earnings). Her mother’s side of the family were farmers and her father’s side were artisans.
“When we think about sustainability in a lens of [Indian] culture, that’s something that I’m really trying to home in on this year.”
The past year that Mayer spent in India was largely unplugged. “I was very intentional on not being on social media to instead orient myself in the community and build relationships….We need that time to digest and build relationships with communities. It’s the nature of the storytelling that’s really important to me.”
Mayer’s sweet spot is one that unpacks the nuanced apparel supply chain, layered nature of oppression and, perhaps most preeminently, the makers behind a product. Now, as she’s back in Los Angeles combing through her stories from her reporting trip spent studying India’s artisanal revival, she’s quick not to tie herself to an “unrealistic expectation of constant output.”
Labor practices, degrowth and the very nature of the “consumer” are fair game for conversation. Her recent opportunities and appearances spanned something of a New York Fashion Week (and Ivy League) tour talking all things fashion from a lens of South Asian culture and sustainability at Harvard Business School, before heading back to Los Angeles, where she is based, for the Green Carpet Fashion Awards.
“The work of climate justice is to engage in reimagination,” she continued. “We talk a lot about diversity. It’s 2023, diversity is literally a modality for sustainability. We’ve been fed a very narrow narrative of what an environmentalist is and what sustainability is in terms of culture and origins.”
She’s reimagining the role of influencer too, recently penning an op-ed on “deinfluencing” (a trending term referring to influencers telling followers not to buy a product) and toying with the idea of making a guide to “influencer ethics,” which is a timely need given the European Union recently drafted propose guidelines for influencers. “So much of the content creator landscape is here’s a product, and here’s what to say.”
Her main advice to the folks in the C-suite: “We need to transcend sustainability discourse beyond quantifying carbon emissions and center the human impact.”