Dalilah Arja

At what point do two adults realize they need to stop dreaming of the perfect shoe rack (and stop tripping over strewn shoes)? After searching for months, my boyfriend, Roman, and I knew exactly what we wanted: a minimal design, preferably made from wood, that would accommodate both of our shoe collections. And it had to fit neatly into the only place our 700-square-foot apartment would allow: along a 48-inch wall in our entryway. The only problem? The perfect shoe rack didn’t exist.

Several of us at Remodelista grew up in Massachusetts and remember seeing the many-windowed abandoned factory buildings in the mill town of Fall River. So we were heartened to hear that the collection of natural fiber rugs we were admiring is produced in a revived Fall River textile mill. Merida, we learned, is a company with a conscience and a mandate to celebrate craft and ingenuity.