Like many of Maria Pinto’s endeavors, M2057 created a solution to a problem that had yet to be defined: women’s changing roles in the workplace, the clothes they now needed to reflect those new positions, and their increasingly busier lives.
The seasonally changing, ready-to-wear capsule collections of dresses, jackets, pants, tops and wraps are sized from XS to XL, eschewing traditional numbers. Details, such as a triangle panel added to the back of an A-line skirt, ensure M2057 pieces fit a wide range of body types and lifestyles. Hemlines are purposefully left raw for ease of tailoring. Pockets are almost always part the equation, whether it’s the angled pockets in the elegant, pull-on pants or a single coin pocket in a sophisticated high-neck top.
To further simplify the often-fraught dressing-for-work process, the streamlined pieces are designed to be mixed and matched—with each other and existing pieces—creating a versatile wardrobe that can be styled in a number of ways, transforming seamlessly from casual to formal events.
Versatility also factors in when it comes to the agelessness of the designs. M2057’s name, after all, references the year Maria will be 100 (for the record, her mother lived to be 101). “I hate how the fashion industry makes women feel as we age,” she says. “I know women who won’t divulge their age, so, I thought, why not just put it right out there.”
