In early 2018, Mrs. Herrera picked Wes Gordon, a highly-esteemed but not particularly well-known (outside of the industry, at least) independent designer, to assume the creative role at her iconic fashion house. Since then, he’s reconnected the brand with the bold, confident, fun-loving (yet eternally elegant) woman who has always been the house muse—attracting a multitude of modern women, from Lena Waithe to Meghan Markle, to dress along the way. "I'm not here to build something that doesn't already exist; I'm here to redecorate a little bit," he tells his friend and Modette Hayley Bloomingdale (who wore a Carolina Herrera dress designed by Wes for her recent nuptials). Here, they discuss Wes before he was Wes, the advice he’s received from Mrs. Herrera and the things every “Carolina woman” has in common. Read on.
Hayley Bloomingdale: Let’s start with the “making of Mr. Wes Gordon”. Can you set the scene with a bit of background?
Wes Gordon: I grew up in Chicago and Minneapolis and then primarily in Atlanta. From an early age I was very fixated on what I’d wear. I wouldn’t go to preschool without my red suspenders and navy suede shoes. The suspenders were fabulous but also practical because I looked like one of those little kids who swallowed a basketball.
H.B.: Well that is the most adorable image ever. Clearly, a fashion superstar in the making from preschool!
W.G.: My mom was working at the time and I would sit in her closet every morning and stomp my feet and tell her what she had to wear.
H.B.: Yes and not much has changed: you still stomp your feet and say, “put this on!”
W.G.: Yes, well, old habits die hard. In school, art class was always my favorite, and I started loving film and cinema. I loved this idea of this escapism, this world created from a dream and the power of visual image, the power of clothes and set design. In my early teens I started understanding that this love I had, this passion, was a career that you could be lucky enough to make your life. So I knew I wanted and needed to work in fashion.
H.B.: That is evident in your Pre-Fall collection. Gorgeous, unabashedly bold colors and prints. Was that the intention when you were creating it?
W.G.: Yes—and for all my collections. I think the rules about seasonality are just kind of gone. It can be casual or fancy or warm or lightweight: it can be all in one. Every season is just a chance to outdo yourself and do a better job than you did a few months before.
H.B.: Do you think about a moment, an Instagram moment or a celebrity moment, when designing?
W.G.: I think about moments that I love and how we can update those or recreate them. Some of my favorite recent ones are Saoirse Ronan at the Mary Queen of Scots premiere in that white organza dress; I loved Lena Waithe at the Met Gala in her rainbow cape and I loved Sarah Paulson in her silver gown. Oh and we did Meghan Markle after her wedding; we had a Lady Gaga moment. We’re also dressing Tracee Ellis Ross at the moment: I love her.
H.B.: What a list! All these women are so different physically but have this same energy and confidence in common.
W.G.: Yes, they’re all bold. They’re not followers, they’re not shy. They’re confident women who when they laugh, they laugh loud, and when they march, it’s to their own drum. I think that’s really Herrera.
H.B.: Did she have any great advice for you?
W.G.: She had two big pieces of advice for me that I try to think of all the time. One is more cultural, the idea that “happy people make happy clothes”. So the environment at Herrera is very community-focused. You know it, you’ve been to our offices: it’s such a unique place. Everyone takes a one-hour lunch break and eats together; no one is allowed to eat at their desks. The other one was this idea that “sometimes the bravest, most modern, most revolutionary thing to do is to be elegant”. And I think this sums her up completely. There’s pressure to chase the trends but sometimes you just need to stand your ground and say “no I like this because this is beautiful.” It’s a courageous thing to do.
H.B.: I love this! In a world of Kardashians in their bike shorts, this is a great motto.
W.G.: There is no one who better embodies the idea of standing by your own taste and believing in it than Mrs. Herrera. And I really took this to heart. She is the strongest woman you’ll ever meet. Oh! And it’s her birthday today!
“This woman laughing with her head thrown back, dancing on a chair, full of confidence: this is our woman.”
H.B.: What a perfect day for this interview!
W.G.: I spent so long trying to build my own brand from scratch and there is something so lovely about coming into a place that already has such beautifully defined architecture. The walls are in place, there’s a floor plan. I'm not here to build something that doesn't already exist; I'm here to redecorate a little bit.
H.B.: That's exactly what I think you’ve done. There is of course a lot of “Carolina Herrera” DNA in your collections but they are also so very you, so colorful and fun and full of pieces that every woman would want to wear.
W.G.: That woman, the life-of-the-party woman, she has always been our woman. This woman laughing with her head thrown back, dancing on a chair, full of confidence: this is our woman. I think that really resonates with the world right now. It’s a bleak, uncertain world we’re living in and it’s okay for a dress to be fabulous and pink. It’s okay to wake up and go to your wardrobe and take out a pair of floral yellow pants that bring you a little bit of joy. Right now, we have to find joy wherever we can and hold on to it.
H.B.: That’s exactly how I feel about that red dress of yours I have. It makes me so happy, I put it on and everything is better.
W.G.: The antidote to bleakness and sadness is beauty and joy!
H.B.: And color!
W.G.: Yes, one of the things I did here was to ban dusty colors... if we want red, it’s RED.