Carolina Herrera: 1939—: Fashion designer

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Carolina Herrera's designs offer a certain chic, well-heeled style, with a classic feminine sensibility, for her devoted base of women clients. The Venezuelan-born couturier, who led a life chronicled in the pages of fashion magazines well before her first dress went out on a runway, creates suits, sportswear, formal gowns, and all manner of accoutrements in the mid- to stratospheric price range, and her business is one of the most prosperous in the industry. Her success, remarked Town & Country writer Annette Tapert, could ostensibly be attributed to a sixth sense for knowing how for how women like to dress, but Tapert added that "Herrera has another great asset: her own image. Her manners are flawless. She speaks English with an irresistible Latin clip and accent, in a voice that is soft and lilting. But most of all, there is her beauty, a noble kind that evokes the Renaissance paintings of the Spanish infantas…. In a time when true elegance good manners and intrinsic femininity are hard to come by, Herrera is an inspirational figure."

Yet Herrera, explained Women's Wear Daily (WWD) writer Lorna Koski, was "hardly bred for … business success. She was born, in fact, on another, much more languid planet, the lost world of the traditional Latin-American aristocracy." She was christened Maria Carolina Josefina Pacanins y Niño not long after her arrival in Venezuela's capital city of Caracas in 1939. One of four daughters, Herrera was raised in relative ease and luxury. Her family's roots in South America stretched back some 400 years, and her father was both a former governor of Caracas as well as an air force officer and aviation pioneer. Herrera's mother was devoted to fashion, as was her grandmother, and as a youngster Herrera traveled regularly with them when they went to Paris to have their clothes made at the ateliers of the great couturiers of the era, such as the House of Lanvin, Cristobal Balenciaga, and Yves Saint Laurent.

Married Twice Into Venezuelan Elite

Herrera did learn to sew at an early age, making clothes for her dolls, but her mother encouraged her and her sisters to develop a wide range of interests, from horses to literature to music. They did, however, urge her into an early marriage at the age of 18 to a similarly well-connected scion of Venezuela's elite. Even in the mid-1950s, the modern world came to Caracas slowly. South American women of Herrera's class and generation, she told Koski, "had a sense of elegance, a different way of living…. It was not so businesslike, but more calm. Women were different. Nobody wanted to work. They were all in the houses, and not very active."

At a Glance . . .

Born Maria Carolina Josefina Pacanins y Niño on January 8, 1939, in Caracas, Venezuela; daughter of Guillermo (an officer in the Venezuelan air force, aviation pioneer, and governor of Caracas) and Maria Cristina Pacanins; married Guillermo Behrens Tello (a landowner), c. 1955 (divorced, 1965); married Rein-aldo Herrera (a magazine editor), 1968; children: (with Behrens) Mercedes, Ana Luisa Calicchio, (with Rein-aldo Herrera) Carolina, Patricia.

Career: Worked as a publicist for the fashion house Emilio Pucci in Caracas, Venezuela, mid-1960s; founder, 1981, and head designer, 1981–, of Carolina Herrera Ltd., New York, NY; designed furs for Revil-lion, 1984-89; launched "CH," a diffusion line, 1986, Couture Bridal collection, 1987, Carolina Herrera Collection II sportswear line, 1989, Herrera for Men, "Herrera Studio" bridge line and "W by Carolina Herrera," 1992; introduced fragrance line, 1988, and jewelry collections, 1990.

Awards: Appeared on the International Best-Dressed List annually from 1971 to 1980; named to its Hall of Fame, 1980; MODA award, Top Hispanic Designer, 1987, from Hispanic Designers Ltd.; Presidential Medal, Pratt Institute, 1990.

Addresses: Home— Caracas, Venezuela, and New York, NY. Office— Carolina Herrera Ltd., 501 Seventh Ave., New York, NY 10018.

Herrera had two daughters with her first husband, but the marriage disintegrated before the decade was over. She moved back in with her parents, the first person in her family ever to divorce. For a time she worked as a publicist for Emilio Pucci, the Italian designer whose name became synonymous with mod, swirly multi-colored fabric patterns popular in the 1960s. Soon she renewed an old childhood acquaintance with Reinaldo Herrera, who also hailed from an esteemed Venezuelan family. He had lived in Europe for several years, but by that time was back in Caracas and hosting his own television talk show. "I think I was madly in love with Reinaldo when I was 15 or 16, but then he went to Europe," Herrera recalled in an interview with Koski for WWD. "But he has always been my great love."

After their marriage Herrera moved into the Caracas home belonging to the Herrera family, called "La Vega" and thought to be the oldest continually inhabited house in the Western Hemisphere. She had two more daughters, and she and her husband soon began moving in increasingly international circles. Their frequent jaunts to Europe made them part of the early so-called "jet set," and they socialized in a swath that included Britain's Princess Margaret and the American artist Andy Warhol. A reveler at the famed New York discotheque Studio 54, Herrera began to make annual appearances on the International Best Dressed lists. When her fortieth birthday neared, she determined to begin a new phase in her life. Interested in launching some sort of venture, Herrera considered starting a fabric design business, since she loved choosing the materials when she visited her dressmaker, but her friend Count Rudi Crespi, a well-known publicist who had worked for Valentino and knew the international haute-couture scene well, loved her sense of style and emphatically suggested that she design a line of clothing instead.

Built Successful Fashion Line

When Herrera announced her intention to become a designer, some friends and even her husband viewed the scheme with skepticism. "I was supportive because I thought this would last fifteen minutes," Reinaldo Herrera told Town & Country 's Tapert. "If she had said it would be fifteen years, I would have asked her, 'Are you out of your mind?'" But in the fall of 1980, Herrera brought some 20 dresses of her own design that she'd had sewn up by her Caracas dressmaker. She borrowed a Park Avenue apartment and invited friends to see them; soon buyers for Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman were interested, but Herrera had just the sample dresses, and not even a plan for production. Back in Caracas, she was introduced to Armando de Armas, owner of a Venezuelan publishing empire, who offered her financial backing. In a few months she opened her design atelier and showroom, Carolina Herrera Ltd, on Seventh Avenue.

Herrera's designs, made from rich, luxuriant fabrics, were a hit with well-to-do New York women in the early 1980s. She was said to have popularized the padded shoulder that became ubiquitous with fashions of that decade, and also showed puffy sleeves on many of her formals, once explaining that shoulder pads always made a woman's waist appear smaller, and elaborate sleeves served to frame a face. In her first few collections, noted Koski in WWD, Herrera displayed "a distinctly Latin sense of drama, with influences ranging from the extravagant ruffles of flamenco dancers to matador's jackets and the pure, sculptural shapes of the legendary Spanish couturier Cristobal Balenciaga."

Though Herrera's line was a bit more expensive than most—because of their superb fabrics and costly trim-mings—they became favorites with a certain high-profile kind of woman, including many of the Manhattan socialites who were also Herrera's friends. One distinctly low-profile early client who became a friend was Jacqueline Onassis, and it was a connection that boosted the fortunes of Herrera's company immensely. Still, the designer was adamant that all of her customers required the respect that a friend would command in matters of privacy. "I never mention my clients," Herrera told WWD writer Irene Daria. "If you have to sell a dress because an important client is wearing it, then that means that the dress was not good. I didn't like when it was done to me so I don't do it to anyone." Elsewhere, she dismissed charges that her business had been built, so to speak, on the backs of her much-photographed socialite friends. "If I only dressed my friends," she scoffed in the interview with Tapert, "my company would have folded years ago."

Herrera's design business remained relatively unknown to the general public until 1986, when she designed the wedding dress for Onassis's daughter, Caroline Kennedy. The bridal gown was ultra-feminine and much copied, and the resulting publicity made Herrera a sudden celebrity. Moreover, both Princess Diana—one of the decade's most photographed women—and American First Lady Nancy Reagan soon began to be photographed in Herrera's creations. Still, these first few years of success unnerved her, as she told Tapert. It was much more work than she'd expected. "When I started, I didn't make the connection between the designing and the business," she recalled in the Town & Country interview. "I had a fantasy vision of this career. It was, 'Oh, a designer! How glamorous! This is divine!' I had no idea I would be at the office the whole day. I thought I would design a collection and then go home."

Expanded Business in New Directions

Encouraged by her newfound success—and with the now-firm support of her husband—Herrera continued to expand her business. Her company launched CH, a lower-priced (known as "diffusion") line in 1986, followed by another secondary line in 1989, Carolina Herrera Collection II. The revenues continued to pour in when she launched her fragrance line; the first scent, "Carolina Herrera," debuted in 1988. This signature scent was based on something Herrera had been mixing up herself for years, using a bit of jasmine oil that reminded her of a fragrant bush outside her bedroom as a teen in Caracas. Her fragrance line expanded to include Flore in 1994 and "212," named after the now-coveted New York City area code, in 1997. She is also one of the few women designers to enjoy strong sales for her men's fragrances.

In 2000, after twenty years in business and with retail sales around $250 million annually, Herrera opened her first store, located at Madison Avenue and 75th Street in Manhattan. Fashion businesses launched by other well-connected women around the same time as Herrera's in the 1980s—such as Carolyne Roehm and Jacqueline de Ribes—had long folded. Herrera's design philosophy, though it no longer included padded shoulders, remained timely and alluring. When asked in an In Style profile by Hal Rubenstein what the ultimate wardrobe bestsellers had in common, Herrera replied, "Simplicity. Clothes that are so comfortable you feel naked. I hate watching women who adjust themselves all night." She also eschewed excess. "Too many ruffles, too much skin, too tight is never sexy or glamorous," she declared.

Herrera was looking forward to expansion into Europe as the first decade of the twenty-first century was underway. Her success was all the more impressive given the fact that Herrera maintains that somewhat languid Latin American tempo in which she was raised. She works only at the office, and keeps normal hours. "We don't work overtime in this company," she declared to Koski in the WWD interview. "If you can't do what you have to do between 9 and 5, something is wrong." Her upbeat attitude also endures. "I love what I'm doing," she enthused in the Town & Country interview. "If I had to stop, I would be very upset. The more I do it, the more I love it. Even with all the complications. Even with all the problems. Those don't matter. If I had to do it again, I would do it from the beginning in the very same way."

Herrera draws much of her inspiration from her quartet of now-grown daughters. She and her husband, a special-projects editor for Vanity Fair magazine, maintain homes in Caracas and New York City. In the latter, Herrera "is considered by many the most beautiful woman in New York society," wrote Koski. In typically gracious fashion, Herrera did admit that "Venezuela is famous for its beautiful women," she said in WWD. "You know, every time I get in a cab and I say I'm from Venezuela, the cab driver says, 'You have three Miss Universes and two Miss Worlds!'"

Sources

Books

Contemporary Fashion, St. James Press, 1995.

Newsmakers 1997, Issue 4, Gale, 1997.

Periodicals

In Style, June 1, 2000, p. 94.

National Review, October 28, 1996, p. 40.

People, May 12, 1997, p. 186.

Town & Country, September 1997, p. 142.

W, October 2002, p. 96.

Women's Wear Daily, March 2, 1987, p. B26; March 7, 1989, p. 18; May 29, 1990, p. 10; June 18, 1991, p. 6; October 20, 1992, p. 12; August 19, 1997, p. 18; July 19, 2000, p. 5.

—Carol Brennan