Fall/Winter 2025: Carolina Herrera Proves That a Woman Thrives When Cared For

By Sean Castelo III February 13, 2025

Creative director Wes Gordon finds inspiration in ephemeral beauty in this season’s showcase for New York Fashion Week

Love lives forever, at least in Wes Gordon’s Carolina Herrera. For Fall/Winter 2025, the designer played Cupid with a collection that felt like a valentine to fashion itself—an extravagant bouquet of sculpted florals, razor-sharp tailoring, and high-impact eveningwear. The runway, lined with roses, was a prelude: this was Herrera in full bloom, petals unfurling under the bright lights of New York.

Gordon’s muse is the 1879 film, Being There, starring Peter Sellers as Chance the Gardener, an unassuming man who rises to political prominence by simply tending to his plants. The film’s absurdity meets its match in fashion’s own surreal ecosystem, where a well-placed bloom can be a power move. “I was thinking about that moment in the garden, just after the rain,” Gordon said. “There is a pureness to Chance the Gardener that informed this collection—a distilled sense of beauty.”

And what a garden it was. Roses blossomed from bustiers, sculpted at the hips, and unfurled across voluminous skirts. Silk rosettes, each petal handmade, brought romance to the waistline, while shimmering gold bullion tulip embroidery made coats and dresses gleam like freshly watered blooms. The color palette—plucked from Sonia Delaunay’s Rhythm Color at The Met—brought a painterly harmony to the mix, with cornflower blue pleats cascading like a Monet sky and jacquard floral lurex catching the light like dew.

But Carolina Herrera has never been just about softness. For every delicate lace separate, there was an immaculate pencil skirt, crisp as a fresh-cut stem. For every sweeping gown, a precisely tailored coat, epitomizes that romance and rigor aren’t mutually exclusive. The Herrera woman holds her flowers for she cultivates them.

Wes Gordon’s collection felt like an appreciation of those perfect moments—when the rain has just stopped, the petals are at their peak, and the world is briefly, breathtakingly still. Ephemeral beauty fades, but in Gordon’s hands, it lingers like the scent of a rose long after it’s been picked.

_{Photos: CAROLINA HERRERA}