Wes Gordon marks Carolina Herrera’s 45th anniversary with a David H. Koch Theater set built to resemble a drive up Park Avenue, 28,800 yellow tulips in the atrium, and a collection that wears the 1980s with a wink and then moves on
NEW YORK – The atrium of the David H. Koch Theater held a floral bed of 28,800 blooming yellow tulips, laid the length of the room between the runway and the front row. Martha Stewart, Tory Burch, Gabriela Hearst, Lux Pascal, Camila Mendes, Ego Nwodim, Pamela Anderson and Fran Lebowitz took the seats facing it. Carolina Herrera, the founder, sat among them in a crystal-covered blouse from one of her original collections.
The blouse still looked good. That is rather the point. The house she started turns 45 this season, and creative director Wes Gordon spent the anniversary looking back to the glamorous 1980s aesthetic that Herrera herself personified and built the brand around, then steered it toward something a woman can wear now.
“I really leaned into, with a wink, that idea of Ladies Who Lunch and going back to the ’80s and Park Avenue with our accessories, fabrics, prints and ruffles. That’s our DNA, and that’s fabulous,” he said during a preview of the collection.
The venue carried the concept through. Designed to resemble a drive down Park Avenue, it put the tulips where the avenue’s median plantings would sit and the guests where the traffic would be.
Gordon did not take the retro ideas too literally, though. Translation, not replication, was the work of the season. “There’s a sophisticated camp to the clothes, and owning it. It’s super chic but in a way that’s playful,” he said.
Three Storylines, One Wardrobe
The collection was built from a few storylines. It opened with punchier, more graphic silhouettes in black, white and taxi cab yellow, then softened into pistachio green, dusty pinks, salmons and baby blue, before closing with more-is-more glamour. Signature polka dots ran throughout.
Inside each thread, Gordon argued for the joy of dressing up across day and evening. The daywear imagined the modern Herrera woman hailing a cab, or more likely calling an Uber, or her driver. A yellow tweedy chiffon-and-ribbon knit set did the morning shift. True tweed and lace pencil skirts arrived with pointelle cardigans and matching bralettes. Knit dresses finished on curled crinoline hems.
After dark, the fabric thinned to sheer chiffon florals and a polka-dot flair. Two airy chiffon tank tunic-and-skirt sets read especially fresh, as did a pistachio green body-con lace number cut with a deep, scooped neckline. Then came volume, styles covered in sculptural organza ruffles, the drama pushed all the way up.
A handful of looks refused to choose between the day’s two halves. Herrera’s signature white shirt with cummerbund cigarette pants. Embroidered lady jackets with bugle bead fringed collars and cuffs, topped with playful frog or zebra brooches and worn with denim jeans or textural pencil skirts. Those hybrids support a company strategy of revising conventional thinking around day and evening as Herrera keeps expanding its categories.
Borrowed Portraits, Licensed Covers
Three collaborations carried the anniversary into product. The Warhol Foundation licensed the artist’s portrait of Herrera herself, which surfaced on an embroidered mini shift dress and a tiny top-handle bag. A partnership with The New Yorker yielded colorful logo knits and a yellow slip dress embroidered with the magazine’s cover from the day of the founder’s first show.
The third came from Taffin, James de Givenchy’s fine jewelry house, which operated from the top floor of Herrera’s Madison Avenue store for five years. Gordon, a longtime fan, approached the designer to create colorful runway pieces, shown alongside his singular jewels. The anniversary show reaching into the store’s own commercial past looks deliberate. The house treats its 45 years as usable material.
Color, glamour, beauty and the pleasure of getting dressed up: Gordon’s megawatt collection carried the house’s hallmark, celebratory spirit from the first tulip to the last exit. Happy anniversary.
See the complete collection below:
Images courtesy of Carolina Herrera
In another NYFW SS27 collection: Tory Burch Spring 2027 ready-to-wear collection at New York Fashion Week
