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This article first appeared on Vogue.
On Saturday, Zero + Maria Cornejo made an announcement on Instagram: “Starting with fall 2025, our focus will shift to the bestselling styles that have become beloved parts of our wardrobes, with an emphasis on producing mindfully with upcycled fabrics in our archives.”
Mindful design — meaning sourcing responsibly made fabrics, or using her own leftover inventory — has been at the heart of Cornejo’s practice for years, but this is different. Cornejo and her business partner Marysia Woroniecka are adjusting the ways they operate. Relying on existing patterns won’t just eliminate the costs of product development, it will also free up Cornejo for other projects: the designer’s been organising her storage facility with an eye to donating pieces to museums in the US and Europe.
Cornejo opened her first store in New York’s Nolita in 1998, and her vision was clear from the beginning. A preference for geometric cuts that never fail to flatter the body helped her build an arty, avant-garde clientele: artist Cindy Sherman, model Stella Tennant, actor Chloë Sevigny, jewellery designer Jill Platner. Ten years later, she moved into the boutique she occupies today on the city’s Bleecker Street, leading a revitalisation of her block. In 2023, she won the Geoffrey Beene Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA).
Independent designers have been hard hit by the economic downturn that began last year, and the situation has only been exacerbated by the US administration’s tariff changes. But the Zero + Maria Cornejo brand has a couple of factors going for it: Cornejo has always favoured timelessness over trends, and the consistency of her vision has produced a loyal client base. Plus: she’s been designing for 27 years — she has a lot of patterns at her fingertips.
“My goal was always to make clothes that were good heirlooms or good vintage, and not to be disposable,” she says over Zoom. “Of course, I love fashion, but I do like the idea of things being sort of ageless and having longer than a season’s worth of life. And I think the clients like that.” Indeed, they seem to. In the comments section of her Instagram post, one customer wrote: “I’ve worn your long Issa dress in a few different fabrics for as long as you’ve made it.” Another cheered the decision: “Here’s to the classics! Here’s to evolution!”
Cornejo is all positivity on the call. “I think it’s a good model, because I think people are really overwhelmed; people are visually oversaturated.” There does seem to be a movement towards simplicity afoot. “We’re giving clients what they want,” says Cornejo. “And we won’t have to work as hard. It’s also like a life decision, you know. We think it will liberate us to get organised and sort of see what, what other things we could do, what other opportunities there are.”
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