Designer Maria Cornejo will proudly admit that one of her most iconic pieces, the chic navy wrap dress that was photographed on Chloe Sevigny for the Paris-based independent fashion magazine Purple in 1999, it’s mass-produced trash – well, it was also an art project. “It was a K-Mart cover,” Cornejo said of the repurposed strip of fabric. “It never went into production. It’s falling apart now, disintegrating.

What started out as a creative lark was inadvertently clever. “We ended up having a lot of customers because of that,” Cornejo said. “This Los Angeles store called out of the blue and wanted to have the whole collection. There was No strategic plan. It all happened very organically, and in a weird way, because I didn’t want to be a fashion designer. Cornejo then summed up his very ’90s philosophy: “The more you said no, the more people wanted you.”

The designer in her studio. Courtesy of Zero + Maria Cornejo.

It’s a very different fashion landscape now. Despite all odds, Zero + Maria Cornejo has survived the New York outposts of giant K-Mart and is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. To honor the occasion, Cornejo’s fall collection consists of limited editions of some of his biggest under-the-radar hits.

The cover dress (now called One Chloe and made from silk charmeuse) will be available for the first time. Many mainstays of the Sunday gallery crawl have been brought to light, such as the 1998 Triangle top and the 2011 Koya coat, which was exhibited at the Met’s”In America: a fashion lexicon.” The anniversary collection goes on sale next month.

Cornejo’s ex-husband and frequent collaborator, fine art photographer Mark Borthwick, photographed Sevigny for this original Purple pull. He reprized the role this year, again photographing Sevigny in the updated version of her namesake dress. Other Cornejo muses he has photographed for the brand include Cindy Sherman and Tara Donovan.

Brooke Williams for the brand’s 25th anniversary. Photo: Mark Borthwick, courtesy of Zero
+ Maria Cornejo.

Since the creation of Zero + Maria Cornejo, it has been more of an artistic project using fashion tropes than a traditional brand. It’s also a go-to label for women in the art industry, as well as artists. new York the magazine dubbed her “the art world’s most famous fashion designer” and counts Kara Walker and Marilyn Minter among her clients.

Zero + Maria Cornejo may not be a household name for those unaware, but her influence is resounding. Sustainability and overlapping with artistry have been key tenets since day one, decades before the industry caught on (and only then often only as marketing ploys or a signal of empty virtue).

The first Zero + Maria Cornejo Fashion Week show took place in 2001. The walls of the room were lined with black trash bags and the modeling cast was made up of all artists and photographers. “The show was bombed,” Cornejo said. “Fashion people all thought it was too dark.”

Tube dress, 1998. Courtesy of Zero + Maria Cornejo.

It was late April and Cornejo was having a bowl of soup at Il Buco in Noho, not far from his current studio on Bleecker. A natural beauty, her silver hair was pulled back in a band. A blue and black printed chiffon scarf was wrapped around her neck and her eyes were hidden behind sunglasses. Cornejo speaks with a British accent but is originally from Chile.

“I left my country when I was 11, because of our ‘9/11’,” she said, referring to the coup and subsequent collapse of the communist government . “We have become refugees. We went to Peru for a year and then ended up in England.

A look from Fall/Winter 2001. Courtesy of Zero + Maria Cornejo.

The family lived in Manchester, where they immersed themselves in the burgeoning punk scene. Two years after his arrival, Cornejo’s mother died. She filled the void by caring for her brothers, then decamped to London to study fashion at Ravensbourne College.

She formed her first label, Richmond/Cornejo, with then-boyfriend John Richmond the year she graduated in 1984. The clothes reflected the earthquake of British youth, with elements of punkabilly, New Romantic and other percolating subcultures. Independent magazine coverage led to over 20 boutiques in Japan and a following in Italy. When their relationship dissolved, the line also dissolved. She then worked as a consultant for High Street brands.

Maria Cornejo in the experimental Mott Street store in 1999, when it presented an installation of plaster-covered teddy bears by Jordan Tinker. Courtesy of Zero + Maria Cornejo.

After meeting Borthwick, the couple lived in Paris before moving to New York in 1996. “I got this garage on Mott Street,” she said. “It was an exciting time to be in New York. AsFour was whizzing around on their bikes and Liquid Sky was around the corner. Downtown was exciting. I had a very naïve and idealistic outlook. We were going to get some artist friends and paint T-shirts or make cushions or whatever. It was supposed to be an experimental and creative space.

But Cornejo had a very personal detour. “My dad was dying of cancer so I ended up being in England a lot and very pregnant,” she said. “I had a strange and magical year – the extremes of life and death. I had to shut down for a year, not go to work and not react, and just be there for my dad, my family, my children and my marriage. And I formulated what I was going to do in space. It was a way to reconnect with my creative roots and find a way to earn a living, to create interesting things that weren’t mom’s jeans.

The first Zero store, studio and art space, at 225 Mott Street, 1998. Courtesy of Zero + Maria Cornejo.

The new venture would be a creative renaissance. “I called it Zero because I wanted people to look at it from a perspective that it was pretty much what they saw, no story, no name,” Cornejo explained. “I had already made a career in England and Japan. It was like starting over. And it was cool.

At first, Cornejo made everything herself. “A lot of the pieces were based on five geometric shapes,” she said. “I had worked for other people and I thought everything was getting so stereotypical, so I wanted to reconnect with the art of design.”

The Pod Shrug with Back Tuck Skirt, Fall 2000, in the Fashion Institute of Technology’s permanent collection. Courtesy of Zero + Maria Cornejo.

Cornejo maintained her punk and DIY ethos, but she was no ingenue. His aesthetic had broadened and matured. Its sophisticated approach to minimalism set it apart from its inner-city brethren, and a cult following in the United States was almost immediate.

The faithful never knew what to expect. In the store, the interiors have changed as drastically as the stock. It might be a hydroponic garden one week and a bare, padded room the next. “Now I have to ask permission before I can even change models,” she said.

Cornejo is well aware that the days in which Zero was founded are long gone. “What I hate is all of the branded content creation,” she said. “Having to sell his private life and his soul to the devil to sell a garment.”

Maria Cornejo in 2012 and the designer’s sketches. Photo: Bibi Cornejo Borthwick, courtesy of Zero + Maria Cornejo.

But she’s continually inspired and sees the anniversary collection as “a reset button.” She recently moved to Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

“I get energized seeing really cool people on the streets again,” she said, “seeing these kids half-dressed in sheer tops and mixing it all up. There’s energy there, which I like because I feel like Manhattan doesn’t have that energy anymore. But Bed-Stuy does, and some of the clubs in Bushwick. You see all kinds.

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