Ask Wes Gordon what’s changed about Carolina Herrera during his tenure, and he doesn’t point to a silhouette or a color story. He points to permission. “Forty-five years gives you permission to think on a different scale,” Gordon says. To mark the brand’s 45th anniversary, he is playing intuitively with its history, fusing Mrs. Herrera’s New York, Warhol‘s portrait of the eponymous founder, and the house’s original codes into one show.
Gordon went looking for the pulse underneath Herrera’s greatest hits—the DNA that transcends garment construction and informs the way a Herrera woman navigates the world. “The archive is most interesting when you treat it as a vocabulary rather than a set of references,” Gordon says. Forty-five years in, he’s fluent enough to improvise. New York, where Herrera’s brand was born, gets its flowers. Gordon’s sources of inspiration include Park Avenue tulips, a black-and-white cookie, and Warhol’s portrait of Mrs. Herrera, released from the archive and printed on a sheath dress.
Gordon sat down with CULTURED ahead of the New York Fashion Week show to dive into the collection’s DNA and make the case that the truest way to protect a legacy is to keep giving it new things to say.
When you’re designing for this moment, are you looking backward through the archive, or is the anniversary a chance to really push forward?
What’s remarkable is how much of the house was already there from the beginning—the confidence, the color, the proportion, and the sense of presence. I never wanted the collection to become an exercise in nostalgia. It was less about revisiting a particular dress or silhouette, and more about taking that original confidence and codes of the house and asking how they can feel new again.
How has your read on the Herrera woman shifted during your tenure, versus how you would have described her on day one?
When I first joined Carolina Herrera, I described the Herrera woman as elegant, confident, and impeccably dressed. Those qualities are still absolutely true, but over time, I’ve come to see her as much more multifaceted than any single definition. The Herrera woman has a remarkable sense of self. She’s sophisticated, but she’s also curious and unafraid to express her individuality.
What connects Herrera women is a sense of confidence and individuality. As we celebrate our 45th anniversary, I wanted to honor the timeless values that have always defined the house while embracing the way women live today. There is a joyfulness to the Herrera woman that comes from confidence—from knowing who she is and being completely comfortable expressing it.
Is there a version of Herrera’s storytelling you’ve wanted to try, but held off on until a moment like this one?
I don’t know that there’s something I’ve been holding back, but there are ideas that need the right moment and context. My relationship with the house has become much more instinctive, and my respect for Mrs. Herrera and the house is so deeply ingrained that I don’t question whether every decision feels Herrera—I know when it does, and it’s simply part of how I design now. That gives me an enormous sense of freedom. Forty-five years also gives you permission to think on a different scale—to bring together Mrs. Herrera’s New York, the codes of the house, and where we are today.
How do you think about spectacle versus intimacy when staging a show of this scale? What does the anniversary let you do that a normal runway wouldn’t?
I’ve always believed that fashion is at its most powerful when it feels personal. You can create something on an enormous scale, but ultimately you want someone to connect with a look, a gesture, or a moment in an intimate way. After showing the Spring/Summer 2026 collection in Madrid last year, it felt right to come back to New York. This is where Mrs. Herrera founded the house, and where our atelier still sits in the heart of the Garment District.
We started looking at the New York we know and love: the tulips of Park Avenue in spring, the New Yorker, Andy Warhol, even the black-and-white cookie. There’s something very intimate about taking these familiar pieces of the city and placing them within the scale of an anniversary show that also feels very Herrera.
Herrera has always had a strong relationship with art and portraiture. How do you decide which references feel most true to the house?
For me, the question is never simply whether someone feels “Herrera.” I’m interested in what they can bring to Herrera—how another creative perspective can reveal something about the house that we might not have seen ourselves. Mrs. Herrera has always surrounded herself with artists, photographers, and people with extraordinary points of view, so that exchange has been part of the house from the beginning.
Andy Warhol’s iconic portrait of Mrs. Herrera is such a powerful example because it sits somewhere between portraiture, fashion, and cultural document. It has been a reference for us for years, but for the 45th anniversary, I wanted to engage with the image more directly. Working with the Andy Warhol Foundation gave us the opportunity to take something so closely associated with the history of the House and place it in a new context.
After Mrs. Herrera views the show, what’s the one thing you’d most want her to recognize as “hers,” and the one thing you’d want to her to be surprised by?
I’d want Mrs. Herrera to immediately recognize the values she built this house upon: elegance, beauty, confidence, and optimism—those are constants. The sense of joy has remained with the brand since the first show in 1981. What I’d hope would surprise her is seeing how far those fundamental ideas have remained and translated to a new generation. The greatest thing about the vocabulary she created is that it remains recognizable, but you can continue finding new ways to speak it.
Forty-five years from now, what do you hope people say defined this era of the house?
I want people to see a clear and consistent point of view for Carolina Herrera, and to understand that what has always defined the house and how we move it forward are inseparable. I’ve never felt that respecting what Mrs. Herrera created and pushing the house forward are opposing ideas. In fact, I think the better you understand that vocabulary, the more freedom you have with it. My job is not to change what makes Herrera Herrera, but to keep finding new ways to express it.
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