A Room of One's Own

Sustainability, culture and craft come together in Los Angeles-based creative Aditi Mayer's gorgeous new home.

- JESSLYN LYE

Above the bed of Aditi Mayer's new home hangs a tapestry that once belonged to her grandmother. Over 80 years ago, Mayer's grandmother had grown the cotton, picked it, turned it into yarn, dyed it and woven it by herself—and then taken it with her when she migrated to India from Pakistan during the partition of India.

“It’s a relic of not just South Asia’s history, but family history as well. It reminds me of so many different things, like my family's relationship to the land and how ancestral craft is a part of our history,” reflects Mayer. “Traditionally, tapestry is something we would put over a cot to sit on or place on the floor. To have it as a work of art on the wall is really special to me.”

Born and raised in Los Angeles, Mayer is a trailblazing Punjabi-American creative redefining what it means to advocate for sustainability. Working at the intersection between fashion, craft, culture and climate, her latest venture takes the form of The Artisan Archive, a platform and agency that examines how culture is the key to unlocking and understanding sustainability.

Having moved in a year ago, her new home—and the first, she shares, that she can call fully her own—has been a way of laying down roots, something that she deeply craved. “I travel so much for work and it’s nice, but I think there was a level of burnout that I started to experience. I wanted to be more connected to my community and to my family who are also in LA,” she shares. “As someone who works in sustainability and is always talking about our relationship to the land, I was learning so much from the places I was going, but I needed a space to channel those lessons in a tactile way. This home has been that, in many ways.”