After three decades in business, Carolina Herrera Ltd. reported more than a billion dollars in revenues for the first time last year. Although that wasn’t enough to put the designer on the Forbes billionaire list (along with such moguls as Ralph Lauren, Giorgio Armani, Miuccia Prada, and Tory Burch), it might not be long before the Venezuelan-born designer joins that most exclusive fashion club. At least if recent business growth is any indicator of future success. But despite the brand’s expanding global footprint and her glittery international background, Carolina Herrera says her company will always be “about New York. It is who we are.”
The Harvard Business School will likely look at reasons the company broke revenue records in tough economic times. Success in fashion, despite its ephemeral seasonality, is nothing if not an endurance test, and the House of Herrera has survived the recent downturn with remarkable resiliency—a 90 percent rise in global sales last year and a forward march into the Middle East. There are plans to open 16 new CH Carolina Herrera stores around the world this year.
But while runway analyses aren’t typically a part of a Harvard case study, all the elements that have helped fuel the designer’s spectacular growth are well represented in her 2013 Spring and Fall collections. There’s the subtle 10065 polish–Carolina Herrera, who lives the life of her customers, is instinctively aware of what will play on the charity circuit, at society weddings, or in the corner office. The C-suite female executive class has embraced Herrera and for good reason—she knows the image demands of women running huge businesses, after all she runs one herself.
Fall 2013 particularly shows Herrera’s deft hand. Fashion always drinks from the well of the past—paying homage to yesteryear is a reliable trope for designers whether in Paris, Milan, or New York. For Herrera, however, it’s homage to the past with discretion, restraint, the styling never suggestive of a costume drama. She says she found a 1940s Italian print, which prompted her to reference a favorite decade— Herrera adored the sharp glamour of movie stars from that period. In the Fall collection, she uses ’40s tailoring allusively—in the shape of a sleeve, the shoulder treatment, a tighter, higher waist. “It has to be in the details,” she says of borrowing from the past. “You can only hint at a decade to be modern. We’re in 2013 after all.”
Herrera also showed her sharp eye for prints for both spring and fall. (Textiles have always fascinated her—she originally wanted to be a fabric designer, but Diana Vreeland encouraged her to do a full collection instead.) From that one ’40s Italian textile, she designed other fabrics echoing the mood of the period. “We develop our own prints, so they belong to the House of Herrera,” she says. But it’s “how you mix them that makes them relevant today,” she adds, explaining how she paired abstract designs with lace and tulle to give them a fresh, modern look.
As a designer, Herrera reaches far and wide for ideas; an eclectic, constantly evolving mood board crammed with images, tear sheets, and fabrics is prominently displayed in her design rooms. For fall, Herrera supplemented her mood board with nonvisual inspiration, too. She commissioned a composition based on Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata for violin. “I’m always listening to music,” she says. “It’s transporting, as if you’re in a dream.” The work, dubbed “Capriccio for Carolina” was so well received, that other original works are planned.
Herrera’s atelier is in New York, and she says the workrooms’ proximity has been critical to her success. “It’s a way you can control everything directly,” she says. “Drape the fabric to the form, which is very important. A sketch will always look good, but the real art is in how the garment moves. Fashion is for the eye after all.”
A jet-setting mother, grandmother, and an A-list social presence on several continents, Herrera takes great comfort in seeing her business, which started with a handful of dresses, flourish. “It’s been very reassuring and satisfying,” she says modestly. “It’s like watching a child mature and grow.” 802 Madison Ave., 212-744-2076; 954 Madison Ave., 212-249-6552