The Carolina Herrera show was 41 floors up in the financial district, with Mount Olympus–level views of Manhattan and Brooklyn. But the crowd only had eyes for Demi Moore, the 61-year-old star, burning up the screen in Feud: Capote vs. the Swans as Ann Woodward, an actress who may or may not have murdered her husband (Truman Capote said she definitely did). As a culture, women like Woodward fascinate us for their willingness to veer from their gender’s traditional script, acting out their rage in a way that’s more typical of men. Astute listeners might’ve also noted songs from Sofia Vergara’s new series Griselda on the soundtrack, Griselda Blanco being another woman who didn’t take anything lying down.
Not coincidentally, Wes Gordon was talking about beauty and power before the Herrera show. “This season, to me, is really about beauty as strength, and strength as beauty, and kind of shattering the idea that the two are mutually exclusive,” he said. “I think beauty is power, and I wanted every look to feel powerful.”
Power isn’t a topic that’s come up often in Gordon’s backstage conversations, but his line of thinking proved fruitful. This collection has a lot of verve and confidence. That doesn’t mean Herrera’s feminine signatures went out the window. There were plenty of flowers and ruffles and big sleeves of the kind that Mrs. Herrera was famous for wearing (today she was in a violet pant suit). It’s just that they were interspersed with more streamlined and architectural designs, like the turtleneck and cigarette pants with an asymmetrical swoop of a skirt spiraling down one leg; or a zip-front basque-hip tank and palazzo pants, not in silk faille or some other uber-fine fabric, but dark denim.
For evening, Gordon pointed out a pair of hoop-skirt dresses, one to the ankles and one to the floor, that had been constructed without the layers of tulle petticoats that would’ve accompanied them in the past, rendering them more modern and easy to wear. The most tempting of after-dark options was those dresses’ opposite, a slender wisp of a thing in black with a plunging décolletage worthy of Madame X, who, as it happens, was another decorous woman who did things her own way.
