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NEW YORK, United States — This year, Carolina Herrera is celebrating 35 years in fashion. Backstage, she compared the exaggerated dressing of today to what was happening in the 1980s when she was building her business. "Les Incroyables," she said, referring to the fashions of the punks and the anti-establishment that pushed hard against her classical leanings. To each their own, was her general attitude. But the sentiment also underscored the fact that Herrera has managed to maintain a certain consistency over the last four decades, creating a timeline of easy, if not undone, dressing.
For this collection, expected plays on the shirtdress were made fresh with a particular attention to the shoulder: handkerchief-knot accents and rounded, full sleeves. She also experimented with material, fashioning top-stitched denim into a ball gown, and mixing floral metallic brocade with cotton khaki. The key look, a molded dress that was shaped to look like a collarless trench worn backwards, was rendered in several fabrics so that clients could collect them all. And while Herrera is anything but anti-establishment, she did send many of the models out in lace-up dance shoes. Flats might not be revolutionary, but they exhibited her very own rebellious side.
