Carolina Herrera has long belonged to a certain society woman: seated front row at life. For Fall/Winter 2026, Creative Director Wes Gordon shifts the guest list. The uptown grande dame makes room for the woman artiste—the painter with turpentine on her cuffs, the photographer who sees the city in chiaroscuro, the gallerist who can dismantle you with a compliment that cuts.
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The Women Who Make the Room
The show unfolded in a vast Meatpacking space washed in skylight, walls lined with murals by Sarah Oliphant—blocks of dusty blue, blush, plum, and brown layered like a painter’s underdrawing. It framed the collection as living portraiture: women who curate, collect, critique.
The runway cast wasn’t traditional models alone but a creative cohort—Amy Sherald, Rachel Feinstein, Hannah Traore, Ming Smith, Eliza Douglas—women who shape culture rather than simply attend.
They matter because they generate culture instead of merely circulating within it. Painters, sculptors, photographers, performers, and a gallerist among them, this cohort represents the machinery behind the art world’s image-making and idea-shaping—women whose work hangs in museums, builds exhibitions, reframes portraiture, and questions authorship itself.
The Higher the Heel…
The clothes met them at eye level. Neutrals formed the base—ivory, camel, black—punctured by jolts of red and flickers of metallic embroidery. A palette that behaves until it doesn’t. Animal motifs prowled across the lineup; calla lilies appeared in sculpted form, their curves hovering between purity and provocation.
There were pencil sketches of a stiletto—an echo of the house’s Good Girl heel—traced across button-downs and skirts with a wink of ’80s attitude. If Carolina in her early years favoured fitted jackets with buoyant shoulders, Gordon revisited the idea and sharpened it, pairing them with asymmetric pencil skirts or, as he hinted, denim and heels.
Evening shifted key. The grand gown took a backseat—Madrid already had its opera moment. Here, cocktail dresses and party pieces held court. Sequined knit separates moved like sweaters but flashed like chandeliers. A tie-neck jacket fringed with paillettes met black denim.
There’s a diva streak threading through it all. Not the one who table-flips and throws an empty glass of wine behind her. The kind who trades barbs across a lacquered dining table, Dynasty-style, ala an if you know, you know moment. The stilettos are sharp; so is the wit. In Herrera’s traditional orbit, power once arrived wrapped in etiquette. Gordon’s artiste keeps the manners but sharpens the dialogue.
Why does it matter for Herrera? Because the house has always dressed women who host culture. This season, it dresses the women who make it. Love may live forever here, but it now carries a sketchbook, a camera, and a very good pair of heels.
Photos: CAROLINA HERRERA
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