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Wes Gordon, creative director of Carolina Herrera, made it clear that this season he wanted to let the architecture of design speak for itself. He professed on Instagram that he is “continually reaching for the height of elegance, the height of craft, the height of embellishment” and that “silhouettes [would be] streamlined, precise and clean.” In doing so, Gordon developed a dramatic yet refined collection, one sentimental to origins of the founder.
A virtuoso of ball gowns, prom sleeves and white shirt-appropriation, Carolina Herrera has been at the height of gala-couture and First Lady-fashion since 1980. For this reason, women who favour a classic pointed shoe and a perfect red lip have had a staple in the Herrera label for more than 40 years. Since Gordon took the reins in 2018, he has been successful in energising its future while carefully balancing its protected history.
Today, overlooking Manhattan, some 41 floors into its skyline, he presented his form of regal restraint via a collection of delicately executed glamour. Wearing iconic, powerful shapes, models like Irina Shayk (in a certifiably doll-like rose gown, replete with cascading bustle ruffles) paraded in front of a clergy of New York’s most well-dressed sophisticates, including Demi Moore and Diane Kruger.
Looks included black scalloped shift dresses and fine checkered skirt suits each left clean and simple for a uncomplicated take on cocktail hour. While red carpet show-stoppers, some tinselled in a webbing of gold and silver, some timelessly elegant in strapless red or black, were a return to rarified, classic beauty.
That’s not to say there wasn’t directional drama – sleeves were big and so were the ruffles. Balloon-gathered shoulders and boxy epaulettes were fabulous in their shapely dominance and a wise evolution of Ms. Herrera’s 80s Met Gala appearances and her debut collections of the same time. The ‘perfect white shirt’ also made a re-appearance, cinched and tucked into a cummerbund then paired with a perfectly swishy ball skirt – perhaps the most iconic Herrera look of all time. Then there were further takes on pre-millennia power dressing, with peplum ruffled skirts, velvet boleros and even a gold-buttoned boucle day dress in the Herrera shade of canary yellow – one that never ever seems to date.
Much like everything Gordon creates, timelessness is key. While each piece can be celebrated for its archival references, their selection and revival this time are to honour the discourse of women in power- just as Herrera has been during her illustrious career. Using powerful silhouettes, sleeves, skirts and ensembles Gordon speaks to the woman she has long been a icon of – those who are strong, beautiful and changing the world.
