“The longer I work here, the more I’m realizing that my job is just to make beautiful things—and it’s the nicest thing in the world,” Wes Gordon said as he stood in Carolina Herrera’s elegant showroom. This season, it was filled with great bunches of delicate baby’s breath, the perfect accent to Gordon’s “romantic dream” of a collection, which was defined by its lightness.
His aim was to shake things up (relatively speaking) by removing all vestiges of stiffness from his dresses. The ethereality of the pieces in this lineup extended beyond aesthetics to the decidedly unstuffy construction of the garments. Rather than hide horsehair, a material typically used for stiffening skirts and creating volume, Gordon used it as a weightless decorative element. Boning was exposed in bodices as fragile as butterfly wings, and some hems were left unfused. “Everyone downstairs in the atelier is the best, the best at what they do. Now we’re trying to break the rules a little bit,” Gordon explained. “I think the way to make elegance useful is to really lighten it up as much as you can.”
Elegance at Herrera is connected to restraint, and this season, the ultimate luxuries were in the hidden details. Upon closer inspection, for example, a tulle confectionery gown revealed a delightful secret: a lace base. Delicately embroidered camellias were veiled under transparent tulle on another model. Spring also saw more covered-up looks due to the requests the house is getting for a Grace Kelly–inspired look (which might suggest that the “naked” wedding dress has run its course). One of the cleaner silhouettes was a collared ivory dress sashed at the waist, which Gordon described as being “as Herrera as a dress possibly could be.” It did conjure the house founder’s signature look—as seen afresh through Gordon’s millennial eyes.
