If there is one topic guaranteed to come up at a pre-collection appointment, it’s that dressing according to season feels about as modern as a land line. But there’s no skirting the issue when, six days into December, the weather is the same in New York as it is Los Angeles—a balmy 60 degrees. Sitting in her showroom in Manhattan on just such a morning, dressed in a sleeveless silk shift and boots, Maria Cornejo declared, “There are no seasons,” and to prove her point, the pre-fall collection she presented included bikinis and bright, ethereal dresses. Fortunately they happened to be lovely bikinis and bright ethereal dresses, in dark graphic prints and vivid blues and greens, respectively, that won’t look out of place in stores—or on bodies—come June. The colors were the tones of grass and cloudless skies, not quite as vibrant as the hues Cornejo showed for spring, but not her signature muted shades either. Which in a sense made them just right. Her silhouettes—voluminous triangular dresses, pleated mid-calf pants—didn’t deviate from seasons past, but as Cornejo, who has a quiet legion of followers, said, “When people find shapes that flatter them, they don’t want them to change.” In other words, they want to find them season after season.
