Next year Maria Cornejo will celebrate 25 years in business. Twenty-five years as a woman-led, independent brand is quite an achievement in this male-dominated world of multinational conglomerates. In the late ’90s, when she launched the label in New York, the industry not only rewarded seasonal change, but demanded it. Cornejo was an outlier, true to her unique point of view whether the prevailing trends of the day were minimalism or maximalism, glam or grunge.
Her longevity comes down to that commitment to her aesthetic. Rather than throw out old silhouettes and start anew, she makes subtle tweaks. A visit to her Bleecker Street headquarters can feel a bit like meeting old friends—old friends refreshed via innovative materials, more often than not with a sustainable bent.
With that upcoming anniversary in mind, Cornejo has been revisiting her archive across the East River in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. For pre-fall, she revisited an abstract print of city lights she made using an early-generation iPhone. “They used to take blurry pictures, but of course, now they don’t,” she laughed. The solid-colored asymmetrical dresses with soft volumes in sunny yellow, poppy red, and sky blue are lifted from the blurry graphic. Another special fabric is the fil coupé that looks like delicately appliquéd lace that she used for cocoon-like jackets and blouson tops. An ankle-length evening dress came in basic black silk, but its double-layered bodice and peekaboo details were as far from basic as it gets.
