Back in October Maria Cornejo returned to her native Chile for the first time in more than a decade. She was invited by El Mercurio, the country s oldest paper, to stage a fashion show in Santiago. It proved an inspirational trip. "While I was there, I kept on thinking about what would ve happened if I d taken a year off and traveled around America, and the sort of clothes I would ve worn." It was that instinct that she tapped into to design her compelling new collection.
Recently Cornejo celebrated her 15th anniversary with a capsule offering of limited-edition dresses handpicked from her archives by loyal clients such as Cindy Sherman, Tilda Swinton, Miranda July, and Karen O. The Zero + Maria Cornejo demographic is artsy and intelligent, and tends to be trend averse. Cornejos Fall clothes retained all of those traits, but the designer wasn t shy about embracing a certain youthful naïveté. Memories of a childhood spent in school uniforms inspired black pinafore dresses and the crisp white button-downs underneath them, while nostalgia for the gap year Cornejo never had influenced the casual cut of pieces like sweatshirts and slouchy elastic-hem pants. Cornejo s trick was to make such things believable for her sophisticated urban customer. The poncho that opened the show came in baby alpaca, and the one that closed it was in a graphic black lace. In between, there were many great pieces to which Cornejo s fans—famous and otherwise—will respond. A bright flash of yellow made a silk crepe sack dress super-memorable. Even better: a T-shirt and track pants in a black Lurex stripe. In a parallel universe, they re pajamas. In Cornejo s, theyre exactly what her girl wants to wear on a special night out.
