Carolina Herrera
Fashion designer
📝 Editor’s Note
For this week’s edition, we travel to Latin America and explore the life of the most well-known Latina fashion designer, Carolina Herrera. In looking at her pictures, I noticed that she frequently wears shirts with upturned collar coupled with midi skirts, looking effortlessly classy. Her style is simple yet bold – which sounds oxymoronic but she somehow manages to pull it off.
Carolina Herrera
Early life
🇻🇪 Carolina was born in 1939 in Caracas, Venezuela
🏇 As a child, she enjoyed horseback riding and was an avid reader
💎 Her mother and grandmother introduced her to the world of fashion at a very young age; they would take then 13-year old Carolina to Balenciaga fashion shows and buy her outfits at Lanvin and Dior
💃 Before becoming a fashion designer, Carolina was already a celebrity within Venezuela, known for one of the best dressed women in the country
Career
🎨 She started her design career at age 40, when her friend (Diana Vreeland, then Editor-in-Chief of Vogue) encouraged her to do so
🛍 Herrera made her debut at Manhattan’s Metropolitan Club which resulted in a huge success
👑 She is known for designing “exceptional personal style” and dressed various First Ladies, including: Jacqueline Kennedy, Laura Bush, Michelle Obama, and Melania Trump
👰 She also designed various wedding dresses for well-known public figures such as Princess Diana and Caroline Kennedy
💰 In 1995, her company was acquired by Puig, a Spanish fragrance company and appointed her as its Creative Director
👗 In 2018, Herrera showed her last line for her eponymous brand
Personal life
👔 Her father was the former governor of Caracas and an airforce officer
💸 She is from an aristocratic family that could trace their aristocratic lineage back to the 1500s
💒 When she was 18, Carolina married a Venezuelan landowner Guillermo Behrens Tello
📺 Four years after her divorce in 1964, she married Reinaldo Herrera Guevara, a Venezuelan TV host
👶 Carolina has 4 daughters – 2 from her first marriage and 2 from her second marriage