Wes Gordon spent his formative years exploring the origin story of the house’s founder in Carolina Herrera. For Pre-Fall, he flipped the script, delving deeper into himself. Her new collection is inspired by the dolls her mother had as a young girl in the 1950s and 60s and made clothes for them. He remembers them from his childhood, and with an infant girl at home, he asked his mother to send him dolls so that the tradition could be carried on. “Really for me,” he said, “it was like revisiting my first interactions with fashion, like a Proustian kind of sensory flashback.”
The unique starting point produced a pre-fall lineup with a lot more eccentricity than the usual Chase Herrera, where Gordon is designing for a new generation, even if decency still rules the day. You can see that playfulness in the oversized gauge of the sweaters, which were designed to look like doll-sized clothes knitted with human-sized needles, and in the large buttons that emphasize the stitching. Then, his mother used some buttons from her clothes to dress his toys. A shift dress adorned with large rhinestone-encrusted bows at the front was another doll-like touch.
But it wasn’t all fun and games. Gordon also experimented with the adult silhouette. These included pencil skirts that she extended to the floor (these are about to become a trend, as you’ll know if you’ve read our other Pre-Fall coverage), which she wore unbuttoned and with shirts tied at the waist. and gowns – a serious business at Herrera – that were color-blocked in sophisticated combinations.
