Carolina Herrera's 45th Anniversary Show to Feature Warhol Portrait of Founder

For its Spring/Summer 2027 collection, Carolina Herrera will mark its 45th anniversary by incorporating Andy Warhol's 1979 portrait of founder Carolina Herrera into the runway show. Creative director Wes Gordon, who sat down with CULTURED ahead of New York Fashion Week, said the anniversary grants "permission to think on a different scale." The collection draws on New York motifs—Park Avenue tulips, the New Yorker, and the black-and-white cookie—alongside the Warhol image, which will be printed on a sheath dress. Gordon worked with the Andy Warhol Foundation to release the portrait from the archive and place it in a new context. The show returns to New York after the Spring/Summer 2026 collection was presented in Madrid, and takes place where Mrs. Herrera founded the house and where its atelier remains in the Garment District. Gordon described the archive as "a vocabulary rather than a set of references," and said he aims to honor the house's original codes—confidence, color, proportion, and presence—without nostalgia. He hopes Mrs. Herrera will recognize elegance, beauty, confidence, and optimism as constants, while being surprised by how those values translate to a new generation. The first Carolina Herrera show was in 1981.