Wes Gordon, creative director of Carolina Herrera, has spent a large part of the last three months at his farmhouse in Connecticut. With restrictions slowly lifting in New York, he is shifting to being back in the city part-time and, when we spoke, he was preparing for the office and atelier to carefully reopen. “We’ve opened our store in Dallas and we’ve been pleasantly surprised by the activity,” says Gordon, “but New York I’m going to be really interested to see because it was by far and away the epicenter of the most cases and fatalities. It’ll be really uncharted territory.”
Gordon, like many, has been in relative seclusion during lockdown. He, his husband (the glassblower Paul Arnhold), and their cockapoo, Bird, have been living at their weekend home, a farm in Connecticut. “It’s an old, old farmhouse, so everything is very small in proportion and delicate, and my husband is six foot one and I’m six foot three, so...the poor house needs a big major rest to recover from all the wear and tear that we’ve done to it,” he says. It’s here, mainly in his sunroom, that he’s worked on the Carolina Herrera Resort collection that will show in mid-July. “It’s been such a team effort and everyone has gone above and beyond the call of duty,” he says of the work they’ve accomplished since March.
His designs for the upcoming collection are inspired in part by The Wizard of Oz. “It took on an extra-special meaning when you think that there really is ‘no place like home,’” says Gordon. How to show the new collection is a different ball game altogether: “We’ll do a virtual market with the stores,” says Gordon, “and we’ll shoot the clothes and videos of models in the clothes for all the international buyers—and even some of the domestic ones—who, understandably, don’t want to travel for market, and we will take advantage of all the technology we can.” Beyond the resort season, how to participate in Fashion Week is anyone's guess: “I think there’s going to be a lot of industry-wide confusion,” he says.
The recent protests in response to police brutality, and the conversations they have prompted, have raised questions within the fashion world, too, about what the industry can do to address its own structural racism. “When you really read the experiences of Black Americans in any industry, you realize, Wow, we have a lot of work to do,” says Gordon. “And that includes me, that includes Herrera, that includes every white American.… We could all do so much better.” He’s also cognizant of how this moment should infiltrate business: “We’re having very open conversations about…what we can do to make a meaningful impact that’s not just about the trend of the moment, that actually leads to real change and promotes a culture of anti-racism.”
When asked about who he thinks is approaching the conversation effectively, Gordon points to his friend Aurora James, who recently challenged retailers to stock shelves in keeping with population data. “She’s a fashion designer, she has a successful line of shoes, but this activist voice that was always present has now gotten stronger than ever,” he says. “In a very short amount of time, [she] is changing the way people think about vendor assortments in stores and how they’re approaching that business.”
Despite being surrounded by screens (Gordon says his iPhone dies twice a day these days), he has taken solace in being in nature. “It’s been really inspiring,” he says. “The promise of nature doesn’t go away. And, despite all of the terrible things that are going on in the world, the daffodils still come up, and the apple blossoms still bloom, and I think there’s something really poetic about that.” While he’s usually an avid reader, Gordon has had a hard time concentrating on books—with thrillers as the notable exception. “To actually be calm enough to sit and immerse myself in a book and get lost is a challenge.” he says, His bedside book stack, courtesy of his mother, who works in a bookstore in Atlanta, keeps growing. “You can’t go from watching the news about everything that’s happening in the world right now and [read] a heavy book, it’s not going to do the trick.”
Instead Gordon has been perusing coffee-table books and photos from trips. “This is kind of a moment when you can digest all of that, the creative imagery and ideas you’ve taken in but never really had time to process,” he says. He points to a book by the photographer Eric Madigan Heck: “I love color, and everything I do at Herrera is basically about color, and his photography, I think, looks like paintings. He’s very talented.”
His dog, Bird, spent the spring “rearing” chicks. “It’s her favorite time of year,” he says, “I don’t know what’s going through her mind when they arrive, but her ultra-maternal instincts come out and she tries to sit with them all day.” Like much of his life, even the chickens are selected for aesthetics. “I curate our chickens based on the beautiful egg colors. I have some that are [light] green, some pale blue, ivory, chocolate brown, olive green, and it’s so fun.”
Gordon tries to keep his body healthy through virtual sessions with his trainer, Ngo. “I do FaceTime working out, but I need to get back to real-life working out because I’m my own worst enemy,” he says, “and I’ve found all these ways to cheat on FaceTime. I hope he doesn’t read this.”
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