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The coolest elegance: Carolina Herrera's universe turns 40

By hollisterclothingoutlet 27/02/2022 847 Views

Fashion

Bold designer, icon of the New York jet, this enterprising and exquisite woman has forged an empire that also encompasses the universe of beauty. Four decades of creativity and charisma

Joana Bonet

This is the story of the daughter of Commander Guillermo Pacanins Acevedo, governor of Caracas between 1950 and 1958, and María Cristina Niño Passios, a devotee of haute couture. As a young man, she immediately learned to move around the dazzling world, educated by a Hungarian governess, and from the landscape of her birthplace, La Vega, with its exotic gardens where they sat in the shade on a swing, she drew her first longing for beauty. At age 13, her grandmother introduced her to Cristóbal Balenciaga.

“The first thing I designed was a black dress, for me, when I was 14 or 15 years old. I wanted to be a vampire ever since I started watching movies with Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo from the '30s and '40s, where they wore veils and hats and smoked. My parents never allowed me to wear the dress after I made it,” she recalls.

My first design was a black dress for me, when I was 14 or 15 years old, that my parents never let me wear”

Despite marrying only 18 years old –with the landowner Guillermo Behrens Tello, with whom she had her first two daughters–, she did not stop traveling, learning and having fun. She also worked for a few months at Pucci, another of the firms in her family's wardrobe. She broke up, remarrying aristocrat and Vanity Fair editor Reinaldo Herrera.

Her delicious way of moving, her style, and her conversation, her bold and funny, made her an icon of New York jet. Carolina, and Herrera, began to advise her friends about her wardrobe; among them was Jackie Kennedy. This is how she told me the first time I interviewed her in her Madison Avenue atelier: "Well, it started the same way as when a friend asks you for your opinion, but I ended up being her fashion adviser." Until fashion editor Diana Vreeland, admiring her determination, encouraged her to create her own brand.

“Mrs. Herrera founded the collection in 1981, and she exhibited at the Metropolitan Club. She invented that mix of city and downtown, living in a house on Park Avenue, but dining in Indochine with Basquiat. I went back through our archive to try and capture that exuberance, that drama, and that unapologetic glamour. The shoulders, the sleeves, the earrings, the shoes…”, says her successor since 2017 –carefully chosen by Carolina– designer Wes Gordon, in full celebration of the 40th anniversary of the house renamed today The House of Herrera . "They said I was going to dedicate myself to it for one or two years, but I proved them wrong," the designer recalls of her when she debuted and everyone thought it was nothing more than a millionaire's whim.

Herrera advised her friends, including Jackie Kennedy, until the editor Diana Vreeland encouraged her to create her own brand.

In 1986, she rose to fame for designing Caroline Kennedy's wedding dress. And two years later, through the neurologist Fernando Aleu, who opened the first Puig fragrance subsidiary in the United States, Catalan businessmen met Carolina Herrera. Together, they decided to launch a perfume that revolutionized the market: sweet and sophisticated, nocturnal jasmine for women that evoked Fifth Avenue, with a packaging that made polka dots her hallmark. And suddenly, a particular iconography emerged, an elegance without sugar or kink, but with tons of glamour.

Her name evoked nights at Studio 54, with Bianca Jagger, Truman Capote or Andy Warhol, but also museums like the Frick Collection, where she paraded her outfits. Carolina Herrera renewed the American style with her New York look.

The fragrances swept the world, her international recognition came and with it the ambition to segment her brand in perfumery and fashion: haute couture under the original label and pret à porter with CH. A lifestyle brand that has gradually become a reference for the middle class, while its first fashion line, Carolina Herrera New York, designed by Wes Gordon, is positioned as the coolest firm for evening wear, an emblem of diversity and synonymous with of a fabulous party, to which, as the creator says, we are all invited.

Mrs. Herrera invented that blend of city and downtown, living on Park Avenue, but dining in Indochine with Basquiat."

Wes Gordon Creative Director of Carolina Herrera

“I am in love with bright, happy, beautiful and big colors. In the last four years, the house has been associated with color. It's part of our heritage: just look at Warhol's portrait of Señora Herrera: the red lips, the big earrings and the yellow hair. When everyone in New York wears charcoal, black and oatmeal, our woman wears hot pink and bright orange”, says Gordon, who insists on the character of fashion as a space of fantasy and encounter.

Carolina Herrera, whom those around her call “la Señora”, shares the legacy with her daughter Carolina de ella –who lives in Spain and is the artistic director of the cosmetics and fragrances division–. She has always maintained that she does not think of herself as a brand, but as a person.

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campaign against breast cancer

On the occasion of International Breast Cancer Day, which is celebrated on October 19, A Touch of Love will dedicate the month of October to sending women a simple but powerful message: a gesture can save lives. During Herrera Pink October, the entire month of October, we encourage women to make an appointment for a professional mammogram to promote early detection. In collaboration with organizations such as the Spanish Association Against Cancer (AECC), which offers free care to cancer patients and families, Carolina Herrera will also donate 10% of the proceeds from sales of fragrances and makeup refills to the cause at carolinaherrera.com in Spain, UK, Denmark, Portugal and France.

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