No Necessary Evil :: Zero + Maria Cornejo Spring 2010 Review [Comment]

Zero + Maria Cornejo's Spring/Summer 2010 show was consistent with her ten-year tenure as a New York independent designer with a propensity for collaboration, invention, and wearability.

HAIKU FORMAT :: a short haiku that sums it up.
Stark Op Art Swimwear
The colors of sea and ice
dreamy beings walk.

BACKGROUND NOISE :: Chilean-born, London-educated Cornejo riffed on several of her already fine-tuned favorites: color-blocking, thick black straps, architectural shapes and unique prints. Zero's garments have the effect of a Richard Serra large-scale sculpture, both in their ability to make an entirely different surprising shape from each viewing angle, and for the necessity of a human wearer or viewer in order to be fully realized.

CHAPTER REVIEW ::

The show opened with a thick oatmeal-colored linen you could easily imagine touching as it made its way down the runway in asymmetrical and bias-cut dresses; the shapes and whiteness had the futuristic feeling of space age garments in the late 60s in complete juxtaposition to the earthy fabric. The show was neatly cut into four chapters, the aforementioned was part of 'Black and White Noise', followed by

'Wood and Brown Leather' :: tailoring feats with leather and silk printed with an impressionistic take on the grain of wood;

'Grass and Green Glide' :: comprised of silks somewhere between mint + kelly green alongside the token playful print called 'grass', a parodic tropical print;
and lastly 'Water and Ink Wave Jacquard' :: including a print that mimics the water meeting the sky.

THE WHAT ELSE ::
The challenge of being an inventor, I suppose, is to avoid the novel (i.e. the Vacuum Hair Cutter), and produce something more like the light bulb, something that allows a person to profoundly change the way people live. Having created new shapes in never-before-seen prints every season, its always interesting to see how Zero will keep it fresh. Here are the ways she did it this season.

a) A continuation of last season's menswear including the androgynous, the mod, and the just plain practical.
b) One piece swimwear, some that reads as op art, others with the luxurious quality of a zero dress. People would be very tempted to wear these as tops.

c) Wooden body cuffs, necklaces + bracelets done in collaboration with SALTAMACCHIA for Zero + Maria Cornejo. I never even contemplated wanting a piece of jewelry on my side abdomen, but now I can't think of anything I'd want more.

d) Incredibly sculptural, clean, modern sandals and shoes in black and white made by EILEEN SHIELDS for Zero + Maria Cornejo. These things will never go out of style. They are minimal + sleek magic seemingly painted onto your feet.
e) Super clean makeup by Dick Page + hair by Sawako Yuri for Shiseido, a divorce from the bright + often tribal of the last few seasons.

SOUND IT OUT :: Music by Scott Mou was half ethereal background with factory-like sounds functioning as percussion.

SO WHAT ::
So what makes this designer important? Well Michelle Obama wears Zero; Obama has been loyal to the underrepresented of the fashion world since the primaries. Also, a Zero show is refreshingly star-fucking free. The people who turn up to her events are people like Cindy Sherman and don't get their heads photographed off by strangers. But who wears her and watches her is sort of irrelevant, and purposely so. Cornejo has been churning out thoughful and earnest designs with a devoted and loyal team, in the spirit of collaboration, and even maintaining a subtle sense of humor in an industry where the craft is often low priority, while forever pushing her art, her self, and the people around her to the surface of an overcrowded world of bells and whistles.

Images provided by Monica Feudi

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