“That’s So ’80s:” Wes Gordon Finds Treasures in a Scrapbook From Herrera’s Past

Several months ago, Wes Gordon received an Instagram DM from a stranger. She had something for him: a handcrafted portal into the origins of Carolina Herrera, in the form of a scrapbook cataloging the designer’s 1983 Spring/Summer collection. What Gordon discovered was a bounty of inspiration that set the tone for his SS22 collection.

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“This book came to me through a beautiful journey in the form of an Instagram message I received. It was a very long message from a woman whose brother worked for Herrera in the early ‘80s and who had recently passed away. She was in New York cleaning out his apartment and she came across these books he had made of his work while he was at Herrera. She couldn’t bring herself to throw them away. She saw the love and time he had put into them. She wrote to me on Instagram and asked if we would want them for our archives. We started chatting back and forth, and she ended up sending me a box, and in them was this absolute treasure. I loved everything about it. He made it all by hand, cutting  out the paper to size, and binding it with a cotton ribbon. And it has the original Herrera logo that Carolina and her husband Reinaldo came up with together. It’s a beautiful shape.”

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“This is the book he made from the 1983 Spring/Summer Collection. I’ve been here for four years now, and I’m fairly well versed in a lot of the archive imagery, but I was still surprised to learn that so many of my favorite pieces all came from this collection. It was a really beautiful season. You can find the old pictures, but to actually see these perfect fabric swatches and the love with which he arranged the whole thing—the run of show description, perfectly cut-out, little pink-sheared edges, swatches, and then the photo from the runway—it’s fabulous. The colors, the looks themselves, it’s so ‘80s.”

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“Here’s the plaid with the polka dots on top. What I really love is when we start shifting away from these fall looks and really get into pure spring. I adore this. It’s so beautiful. This is a jacket shape that I’m riffing off for the collection.”

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“These are like menswear plaids that Mrs. Herrera rendered early on in blush pinks. I love how she mixed the bold red stripe into the black and white. Herrera is all about juxtaposition and contrast. It’s about uptown and downtown, elegant and undone. It’s masculine and feminine, which is so often one of the formulas to elegance that easily demonstrates that combination of the traditional and the unexpected.”

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“Very often, Mrs. Herrera doesn’t get credit for how forward and avant-garde she was. This is 1983, and the combination of these linens, the color blocking, and the white tights and white pumps are quite bold looks.”

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“It was also really fun to look at this book, because so many of the things I’ve been doing at Herrera, this push of polka dots, and the sleeves, and the drama, is really referenced in this collection. It’s really validating in that sense.”

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“So often Herrera is associated with cocktail and evening dresses, but, since the beginning, the House has done some of the most beautiful tailoring. This tailored jacket with black and white print orchids meets the definition of a jacket in broad terms. It’s really an evening cocktail piece, but it’s a fabulous sculpture. The tailoring is truly Herrera, and I love everything about it, especially the silhouette’s graphic boldness.”

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“It’s funny—two seasons ago I used almost exactly the same fabric without knowing it had been used in this collection. It’s a heavy organza kind of fabric with a polka dot. Polka dot is our signature print. One of the things  I loved about receiving this book was that it validated so many of the things I’m doing in the Herrera collection now.”

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“This pair is beautiful. This is everything Herrera is, should be, and was. It’s fabulous.”

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“She started in 1981, so this is only her second year, really. These are beautiful, the silk crepe that’s printed with the Harlequin big checks.”

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“This one is one of my favorites. So beautiful, so fabulous, and something that could be in one of our collections now, it feels timeless and cool.”

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“People don’t make things like this anymore. It’s such a treat and something that really served, unexpectedly, as the inspiration for this upcoming season.”

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“In 1983, she made these shapes and then created these cut-out flowers that were set on top as appliqués to the seersucker.So rather than the more conventional blue and white, we did it in this raspberry pink, lilac, and orange. Then there’s the gingham shirting that I did in a pink, a black, and a red, and this gingham tailoring, as well, which is very much in the book.”“The red is very Herrera.”“Sometimes creating fabrics is a bit like cooking. When you have really good ingredients, what you end up preparing should be simpler. You want to let those ingredients shine and not over-complicate it. This beautiful textile is something that, whether you know fashion or not, you look at it and fall in love.”

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“The red is very Herrera.”

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“In 1983, she made these shapes and then created these cut-out flowers that were set on top as appliqués to the seersucker. So rather than the more conventional blue and white, we did it in this raspberry pink, lilac, and orange. Then also the gingham shirting that I did in a pink, a black, and a red, and then this gingham tailoring, as well, which is very much in the book.”

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“Everything will continue to change and evolve leading up to the show—It’s going to look so different in, what, almost three months, right?”

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“I worked with an artist who just painted brush strokes of the letters of Carolina, and then arranged them into this print.”

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“Two of the most Herrera things are florals and polka dots, so why not combine them?”

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“I feel like the magic and entertainment value of this upcoming season is paramount. needs to supersede the commercial value. There’s an emotional response people need to have right now to a fashion show. It’s been a long time since we’ve been able to put on an in-person show and it must be incredible. I’m excited.”

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Hair: Yohey Nakatsuka

Makeup: Seiya Iibuchi