For Spring/Summer 2027, Carolina Herrera celebrates 45 years with a love letter to New York, revisiting the women, places and cultural icons that shaped the House while reimagining its signature femininity for today.
What does a Carolina Herrera woman look like 45 years later? She may dress differently, move faster and live in a very different New York, but one thing hasn’t changed: she still has no interest in going unnoticed.
Carolina Herrera’s Spring/Summer 2027 collection presented at NYFW celebrates 45 years of the House, founded in 1980s New York and shaped by the women who inhabited its world. Almost half a century later, that inspiration hasn’t disappeared; it has simply evolved. At its core remains the same confident, sophisticated femininity and an unabashed pleasure in dressing up.
For this season, the creative director Wes Gordon imagines the Herrera woman constantly moving through New York, from uptown to downtown, between meetings, walks along Park Avenue and inevitable rides in a yellow cab. It is no coincidence, then, that Taxi Cab Yellow becomes one of the collection’s defining colors. Paired with black, white and the House’s signature polka dots, it also recalls the packaging of Carolina Herrera’s first fragrance, designed by Yves Zimmermann in 1988.
But the New York references don’t stop there. The signature Mimi Bag, rendered in lustrous satin, is adorned with tiny golden frogs: a nod to La Grenouille (“frog” in French) the historic Midtown restaurant that opened in 1962 and became synonymous with Manhattan’s elegant social scene. The same playful spirit carries into the jewelry, where zebra brooches and grenouille motifs are joined by a tribute to the iconic black-and-white cookie, one of New York’s most recognizable sweet treats.
At the heart of it all is the world of the so called “ladies who lunch,” the sophisticated women of New York society who inhabited Carolina Herrera’s universe from the very beginning. Gordon brings them into the present, still walking down Park Avenue, but now with a contemporary wardrobe and attitude.
Even the setting becomes part of the story. For the show, David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center was transformed into Gordon’s vision of Park Avenue in spring, filling the space with nearly 30,000 yellow tulips. After the show, the flowers will be donated and repurposed as mulch for New York City parks.
The collection’s dialogue with the city’s history becomes even richer through three special collaborations, each connected to a different chapter of the Herrera universe.
The first, with The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, brings Andy Warhol’s portrait of Mrs. Herrera into the collection. Licensed for the first time, the image appears on a selection of bespoke pieces, including an embroidered mini dress and the Jacqueline Bag. Behind the portrait lies a personal story: Warhol first photographed Herrera in a series of Polaroids, which later inspired the artwork. In exchange for the portrait, she gave him a Van Cleef & Arpels bag that had been a gift from her husband. It is an anecdote that perfectly captures their friendship and the creative New York scene they both inhabited.
The second collaboration involves a publication almost inseparable from the city itself: The New Yorker. The Herrera atelier recreated in embroidery the cover of the issue published on April 27, 1981, the very day Carolina Herrera staged her first fashion show at the Metropolitan Club.
The third collaboration is with Taffin, the fine jewelry house founded by James de Givenchy. Here, the connection runs through the geography of New York itself and one address in particular: 954 Madison Avenue. The building once housed a Givenchy boutique, while Taffin later opened its first showroom on the third floor. When Carolina Herrera eventually acquired the building, Taffin remained there for several years. For Spring/Summer 2027, that shared history is revived through a jewelry capsule created exclusively for the runway.
Few collections manage to layer so many references without turning them into an exercise in nostalgia. Carolina Herrera SS27 is, above all, a love letter to New York: to the city where the House was born, to the places that shaped its history and, most importantly, to the women who helped define its imagination.
Wes Gordon looks back at 45 years of Herrera not to recreate the past, but to bring its spirit into the present.
“Forty-five years gives you an extraordinary heritage to work with. This collection is about taking everything we love about Herrera and asking what it looks like today.” – Wes Gordon
Carolina Herrera SS27 Images
