Growing up in Los Angeles, Lilli Elias wasn’t interested in the usual teenage pastimes, like going to the beach with friends. Instead, she went to vintage fairs to browse through antique clothing and connect with old relics. “People being the relics,” Elias, 28, clarifies while laughing. Clothes from the 1890s, 1910s, 1920s, and 1940s usually caught her eye. It wasn’t the garments—it was the fabrics.
Now Elias lives between Los Angeles, New York, and Amsterdam, and runs her own homeware brand, Autumn Sonata, which she started in 2022. Right now, she’s focused on textiles. To create her towels and bath mats, she sources antique and vintage fabrics from online and physical archives, antique books, and trade fairs. Elias re-prints the pattern, altering the dimensions and colors to her liking. Her approach is a hit. In just two years, she’s landed her wares in more than 40 specialty boutiques around the world, from John Derian, in New York, to Everyday Needs, in New Zealand.
“It’s not rocket science,” Elias says. “But at least it looks nice.”
Before turning to textiles, Elias thought she might be a music supervisor. Her father, Jonathan Elias, is a composer and music producer who has worked with artists such as Grace Jones and Duran Duran. “I didn’t know what to do and had an interest in music, so I think I just gravitated towards that,” she says. “It was really about history. I love music history.”
In 2014, Elias moved to the East Coast to study music at New York University. She quickly became engrossed in avant-garde-music history and started her own radio show at the college’s station, WNYU, where she played French and Italian film scores as well as electronic music. Around this time, she discovered archival studies. One of her musicology professors, who taught a music-archives course, took her under her wing.
In 2018, she took a job at the New Museum as an archival assistant, where she helped catalogue, index, and re-house an art collection for its forthcoming acquisition. It inspired her to get a master’s in archival studies at the University of Amsterdam.
The idea to apply her degree to fabrics came to her after she graduated. “I kept coming across these really beautiful prints and patterns. I really wanted to figure out how to preserve them, but then also make them accessible for general use.” So began Autumn Sonata, which she named after Ingmar Bergman’s 1978 movie. “I just liked the name,” she confesses. “My favorite of Bergman’s is actually Wild Strawberries.”
After launching a limited-edition toiletry bag with Cap Beauty in November, Elias is expanding her offerings. In March, she will debut linen tablecloths, place mats, and napkins. Meanwhile, she’ll be perusing antique markets everywhere from Milan to Pasadena to find new prints.
Elena Clavarino is a Senior Editor at AIR MAIL