Maria Cornejo, a Chilean-born designer, has long been an underground fixture in the fashion world. Not exactly famous, not exactly unknown, she has consistently put out beautiful womenswear since her club kid days in London three decades ago. After growing tired of London Cornejo moved to Paris and then Tokyo, finally settling in New York City in 1996, where she opened an atelier in Nolita under the name Zero. She has become known for her unconventional, fluid garments that may look perplexing on the hangers but morph and fall gracefully once on the body.
     This season Cornejo decided to dip her toes into the overheating men’s fashion market by creating a capsule menswear collection, which she showed with her womenswear during the Spring 2010 New York fashion week. With admirable consistency she transferred her design signature into a concave-shaped rain jacket, a seamless one-piece shirt, an oversized sweater with dropped shoulder, and slim bias-cut pants, among other pieces. The resulting silhouette is perfectly laid-back – no easy task to achieve when everyone these days seems to be trying their hardest to look nonchalant. The fabrics echo the comfort of the slightly asymmetric cuts – soft cottons and spring weight wool are predominant. The muted and discreet colors – black, white, and navy – create a gentle quietness around the collection.