On Thursday, Carolina Herrera creative director Wes Gordon presented the brand’s fall 2026 ready-to-wear collection during New York Fashion Week. The show was held at an event space on Little W. 12th Street in the Meatpacking District, and mixed in with the typical parade of willowy fashion models were several art world figures, who, while certainly fashionable themselves, are not necessarily known for walking the runway.
Among them were photographer Ming Smith, painter Amy Sherald, artist and actress (and occasional model) Anh Duong, art dealer Hannah Troaore, performance artist Eliza Douglas, and sculptor Rachel Feinstein (along with her teenage daughter, Flora).
“I’m celebrating the kind of women who are often overlooked through history,” Gordon said at a preview in his studio, which Women’s Wear Daily attended. He also name-checked Peggy Guggenheim, who was on his mood board.
Leopard print features prominently in Gordon’s collection (as seen in the knee-length jacket modeled by Smith), as do florals (for example, Feinstein’s white dress printed with red calla lilies, or the lily brooches worn by Traore and Sherald). WWD described the collection as exhibiting “a restrained glamour with pieces that were a bit Hitchcock ’60s hourglass, a bit ’80s with rounded puff shoulders and couture coded with sculpted jackets, knits, tulip-shape skirts and diaphanous printed dresses that floated off the body.”
Below are some of Carolina Herrera’s fall 2026 runways looks, modeled by an intergenerational cast of contemporary art figures.
