Explosive colors pop at Carolina Herrera

By

Gabriella Lacombe

Published
Feb 12, 2019

This fall is turning into a feast of color and springtime longing, with the house of Carolina Herrera sending out a bright and airy Fall 2019 collection of powerfully pigmented womenswear.

Where his Spring 2019 collection for the label focused mostly on fitted silhouettes and structured tailoring, this season Carolina Herrera creative director Wes Gordon revealed a series of extravagant, floor-length trapeze dresses, which dramatically ballooned like a ship’s sails as models breezed down the runway.

The collection’s shorter dresses featured short bubble skirts and shining baubles, while two-piece sets showed off daring cut-outs revealing models’ bare backs. An artistic sophistication prevailed, conveying the label’s ongoing shift towards to a new kind of elegance – one that isn’t afraid to let its hair down.

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Like his last runway presentation, Gordon’s Fall 2019 show was set in the New-York Historical Society and featured cheerful pops of bright color, including sunshine yellow, hot pink, fluorescent orange, springy green and silver, which featured in a particularly stunning sequined gown. Classically feminine floral prints also made their appearance, this time in a bold and slightly abstract form.

Wes Gordon made his runway debut at the house of Carolina Herrera in September of 2018, and this latest show marks his second since the label’s namesake designer revealed her plans to step down in February of 2018, drawing a line under her time as lead designer with her final Fall/Winter 2018 show.

A subsidiary of Puig, the Carolina Herrera label has historically been driven by its perfume business, a fact underlined by its Spanish parent company in its 2017 financial results, which highlighted the success of the brand's Good Girl fragrance as it rolled out in the US. 

As Gordon continues to shift Carolina Herrera towards a younger, more contemporary mindset, industry observers will no doubt be interested to see how this new stage in the brand's development might alter that dynamic moving forward.