Why fashion activist Aditi Mayer considers sustainability as an interrogation of power

The Los Angeles-based content creator, photojournalist and sustainability activist talks about her relationship with fashion

As a multi-disciplinary professional, Aditi Mayer’s creative interests and expertise span filmmaking, photojournalism, writing, content creation and fashion. All of 25, Mayer has cemented herself as a strong voice when it comes to sustainability and social justice in fashion. She uses the medium of storytelling on social media platforms like Instagram to start a dialogue about gender, race, labour rights and the environment in the context of fashion. “Being a storyteller allows me to be acutely aware of the narratives we’re exposed to and how we need new stories that can champion longevity and care,” she says, adding that sustainability, too, is a trope that is deeply embedded in storytelling. “If sustainability is about challenging the dominant way our systems have operated (in fashion and beyond), it’s because we’ve been fed a narrative that has glamorised disposability,” she points out.

A conscious journey 

Mayer’s journey towards sustainability and becoming a conscious consumer began in 2013 when she read about the tragedy of the Rana Plaza factory mishap in Dhaka that took place in April that year. The structural cracks of the building led to the collapse of the eight-storeyed factory, killing more than 1,132 workers and injuring over 2,500. However, due to pressure from their senior management, the workers were called in the next day to finish their orders for fast fashion brands. Since then, armed with a degree in international studies, literary journalism and digital filmmaking from the University of California, Irvine, Mayer has started conversations about decolonising land, labour and fashion, degendering fashion and mindless consumerism. She has also written about policies to bring transparency in an industry like fashion that is notorious for greenwashing, how the industry is part of the problem of deforestation of the Amazon rainforest and the problem of diversity when it comes to sustainability in fashion. 

Although Mayer is now a well-known face in fashion, growing up, she wasn’t someone who had a passion for it. Her true interest lay in photography. In 2021, she was named as the National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellow for which she sought to understand the environmental and social impact of fashion’s supply chain across India. “I became interested in the use of design to communicate my identity. As a South Asian woman, I was into the idea of fusion, bringing in ideas of ‘East meets West’ in terms of my style,” says Mayer.

From a young age, her relationship with fashion was dictated by trends and the arbitrary ideas of what’s ‘in’ while also being keen on thrifting. “This was before it was the cool thing to do; it was an economic necessity for me, but it was also something I genuinely loved. It instilled an idea of thinking about personal style when you’re not presented with a mannequin to tell you what to wear,” she shares. She is now a supporter of small, sustainable brands that have intimate relationships with their supply chains, and are championing cultural sustainability through reviving regional textiles and crafts, a lot of them being Indian labels like Aroka, Turn Black, Kokun, Uru Maku and Joskai, among others.

“India has always been rooted in sustainability–especially in relation to fashion; we have a culture that champions knowing our makers, mending or repurposing the things we own and passing things down,” she says.

Protecting heritage 

If you are one of her 67,000 followers on Instagram, you might have followed Mayer’s recent trip to India, documented on her Stories. From attending FDCI x Lakme Fashion Week and stirring up conversations about fashion, climate and the role of women, to revisiting her home state of Punjab and meeting the farmers who had made the switch back to ancestral farming practices (“which now often carry the contemporary titles ‘organic’ or ‘regenerative’ farming,” she points out), the trip made her realise the importance returning to a model that challenges the idea of mass production, opting, instead, for production by the masses.

“The farmers I met framed the return to ancestral practices as a return to spiritual and emotional connections to the land, versus the view that land is a tool to be used solely for an output, yield and profit. In that process, farmers were able to return to pressing matters like biodiversity, native ecologies, water conservation and soil health. Many articulated the inherent ties between ancestral farming with ancestral artisan industries and how the destruction of one went hand-in-hand with the other. To protect one is to protect the other, and therefore, our virsa (heritage),” she explains.

The politics of power

Looking at fashion’s evolving nature, Mayer hopes that the industry is decentralised and rooted in regionality. “I often argue that our dominant fashion model is colonial in nature. Power is centralised. Among the world’s richest billionaires are CEOs of fast fashion brands, while their workers and the landscapes they produce continue to suffer,” she says.

 While ‘sustainability’ is one of the most precariously used words in fashion, for Mayer, it is an interrogation of power. “Sustainable fashion is a seamless way for me to use style as a vehicle to explore topics of sustainability and social justice. It’s about using the attention economy, or the common denominator of clothing (we all need to get dressed right?) to understand our position in the larger context of power and oppression,” says Mayer. “It’s subverting the notion of fashion in many ways–often written off as frivolous–while injecting ideas and discourse. It’s like, ‘look at my pretty dress,’ and now let’s talk about the politics of labour, culture, the environmental impact of fashion and more,” she concludes.

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