Maria Cornejo

“As a kid, I always used to make clothes. My grandmother made everything with me - she taught me how to knit.”

“My parents, they were both Socialists; they were young - 30, 31. They were both successful career people. They had been teachers, and my dad spoke English.”

“My mother had her dresses made. In those days in Chile, the early '70s, people had dressmakers make their things. With the leftovers, my sister and I always had a matching outfit. She had an outfit, we had the mini version. That was the very late '60s, early '70s way to dress your kids.”

“My aunt made stuff; my mom was creative, so I was surrounded by that. When I moved to England, it was '75, and everything was happening. My whole teenage life is England, glam rock and David Bowie and Sex Pistols and Iggy Pop, all that stuff.”

“Because America doesn't have a strong textile industry anymore, we have to bring things like fabrics, zippers, and color tape into the U.S., and having so many elements involved in production adds to the amount of waste. You might have some things coming from Italy, a button coming from China, or lining coming from Korea; it's just endless.”

“My parents came from very humble families. My grandfather had a construction business coming from farmland, and my grandmother could never read or write. We were very spoiled. We had a nice house - and then, all of a sudden, we had nothing.”

“I did go to fashion college, where I was a little punky, a little Bow Wow Wow. I wore red eyeliner. At the time, Vivienne Westwood was really big, so it was a lot of that. London was having a really big moment. I was mixing vintage with things I had made.”

“Before I started my company in 1998, I worked for big companies traveling a lot and saw firsthand how much waste there was. I was flying across the world in first class to places like Italy or Hong Kong, where I was staying in 5-star hotels, only to nickel and dime someone over a sweater price.”

“My shrink said to me once when I used to get really overwhelmed and super depressed because I was really run down between kids and the company and there was just so much going on - she said, 'You know, you have to look after you in order for you to look after everybody else.'”

“The fashion business got boring. I was working with big companies, but the minute it became too formulaic, I got bored with it. I wanted to do a creative space where I could just make stuff - kind of like an atelier, where I could collaborate with other artists, drape geometric shapes on the body, make cushion covers, or whatever.”

“Sometimes I need to go for a walk for inspiration.”

“I wanted to start something in New York that focused on making products locally and, because I'd just had my second child, didn't want to be traveling halfway across the world anymore. Originally, I wanted to open up a gallery space and sell things like cushions or blankets that didn't have a season, and have friends or artists contribute.”

“When I was in high school in England, I wasn't sure that you could have a career in fashion. In those days, there were very few fashion magazines. I didn't realize there was a school where you could go and learn how to make clothes and design. I thought you just had to be discovered somewhere, like a film.”

“Being your own woman, not cookie cutter - that is the greatest luxury!”

“I'm not one for conventional wisdom. I founded my label in 1998, but after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, my Japanese backers pulled out, and I couldn't afford to produce the line myself. I needed fresh ideas from someone who understood technology, since that was the direction the business was going.”

“Sexiness today is not about having a perfect body and wearing a tight mini skirt; it's about what you don't show that's truly sexy.”

“My art teacher was really encouraging me, because he really liked that I could draw. I felt very torn. At that time, I had to pick one, and I felt much more confident in the arts than I did in chemistry. My big thing was that I actually wanted to be like Jacques Cousteau.”

“I got fired from my first job in a store when I was a student because I kept wearing my own things, and people kept asking me where they were from, and the owner of the store got annoyed with me. So I got fired because I couldn't afford to buy the clothes from the store.”

“I always say you can only change things from within. It's all about energy. If it's positive, then - even, like, somebody you don't like, saying hello to them one day just switches the conversation, and instead of being angry, I think it's good.”

“I'm not an intimate person, really.”