To celebrate her 25th anniversary, Maria Cornejo self-published a book, Back to Zero; in it friends famous (Chloë Sevigny) and otherwise wear her clothes and offer testimonials about her work. There’s a signing party on Thursday at Dashwood. Go buy a copy and toast her quarter century in business; there’d be no better place to see her clothes in the wild.
It’s been since before the pandemic that Cornejo has shown on the runway, but in the wild is really where her clothes belong. She doesn’t design for the 8 to 12 minutes a fashion show lasts; she’s not on the perpetual quest for newness that the system can demand. She designs for real life. There’s a consistency to what she does that keeps customers coming back, but that doesn’t mean her collections don’t change—only that when they do. it’s because of her own instincts.
Take her new spring collection. If you detect a dressier, more put-together sensibility, that’s because Cornejo herself finds herself inclined to look more put together. Working as she does in NoHo, with its fancy cycling studios and fitness centers, she sees jog bras and leggings coming and going. These clothes are a riposte to the athleisure trend: just as comfortable but without being sloppy.
Not that you’ll find anything as straightforward as a traditionally tailored suit. Instead, she cut a cropped bomber and dropped pocket pants from tan eco-denim and another cropped bomber in a leopard jacquard with a narrow pencil skirt in a stretch fabric. Cornejo is the rare designer who shares the origin, composition, and care instructions of all her textiles, probably because she’s worked harder than most to source responsible materials. Even the luxe floral fil coupé jacquard—particularly eye-catching in the green colorway (see the bubble dress and matching jacket in Look 22)—is woven from GOTS-certified organic cotton yarn.
It was a surprise to learn that long evening dresses are her top performers. Her arty, edgy sensibility doesn’t lend itself to the red carpet or the kind of dresses you often see celebrities wearing there. But Cornejo’s gowns are of a different kind. They don’t depend on internal corseting to create shape; she uses bias cutting and draping to create her sinuous lines. A shiny stripe dress in liquid silver didn’t make the look book, but it’s worth a shout-out; believe it or not, its cupro blend is machine washable.
