There is nothing quite like an abuela. In Hispanic and Latinx culture, a grandmother is the matriarch, the poised beauty, the wise, powerful creature who stabilizes a family. But otherworldly as she may seem, she is also often the committed caregiver, the fun-loving playmate, and, let’s face it, the one who sneaks the treats. Put all of that in a rich shade of red lipstick and you’ll find Carolina Herrera.
As an outsider, it’s almost impossible to envision Mrs. Herrera, who for decades has served as a bellwether of New York chic, as an abuelita. She’s a creator of timeless elegance, an artist who has dressed some of the world’s most powerful women, a fashion phenomenon in a crisp white shirt and flawlessly applied lipstick.
But at home, according to one of her daughters, Carolina Adriana Herrera, she’s mostly the rebel who feeds her grandkids junk food past their bedtime. “I mean, whatever they want, they get,” she tells Harper’s Bazaar. “Like, she comes to Madrid and she lets them watch TV for hours. They eat chocolate and drink Coke and watch Netflix until four in the morning. They can do anything; she’s that kind of a grandma.”
Carolina Adriana Herrera, one of Mrs. Herrera’s four daughters, has three kids. They are as close as it gets, and, in fact, Mrs. Herrera’s grandchildren are some of her biggest front-row fanatics.
In February 2018, when the Venezuelan-born designer, now 83, took her final bow at New York Fashion Week, following a career of nearly 40 years and more than 72 shows, sitting beside some of the industry’s biggest names—Hamish Bowles, Karlie Kloss, Glenda Bailey—were Mrs. Herrera’s 12 grandkids, cheering her on. (Since Mrs. Herrera’s departure, Wes Gordon has taken up the design reins for the house.)
“They find it all very cool, the smells and the clothes, but for them it’s like theater,” Carolina Adriana Herrera, who has long been the head of fragrance at Carolina Herrera, says of her kids.
One thing nobody—not even the grandkids—can do, however, is mess with the designer’s perfectly conserved closet. “She’s like a private investigator,” Carolina Adriana Herrera says of her mother. “I can take a winter brown sock, and she’ll be like, ‘Did anyone take one of my socks?’” Luckily, she adds, “My mom has a shoe obsession—that’s her little secret—but she’s like a 35. And those no one takes, because no one else can fit into them, and she’s thrilled.”
There is an almost unreachable level of glamour the world has gotten used to seeing on Mrs. Herrera’s runways and in her personal style, with her long, belted skirts, minimalistic capes, collared shirts, and red ball gowns. Her look perfectly combines Euro-Latina elegance with aristocratic New York City street fashion. But Mrs. Herrera’s personal life is humble, family-oriented, and “very low-key,” her daughter says.
She says her designer mother has taught her to “work really hard” but also “cultivate a strong inner life” and not let the success of the brand distract them from what’s really important, which is their family. “I was quite close to my grandmother from my father’s side, and if there’s one common denominator between my sisters, me, my mother, and even my grandmother, who died in 1992, it’s that we’re all very strong women,” Carolina Adriana Herrera says.
She adds that she doesn’t see the Carolina Herrera brand as their only legacy. “I don’t think that defines me, it doesn’t define my mother, and I certainly don’t want it to define my children—especially because they’re growing up in a whole different generation than I did, where ‘likes’ and social media and this sort of fakeness that’s not real life is pervasive,” she says. Rather, it is what Mrs. Herrera stands for—the values she has imparted and the way she lives her life with style and integrity—that will leave the greatest impression on Carolina Adriana Herrera’s children. “I do think they should be proud of what their grandmother did and proud of what their mother works at—just like any other grandmother and mother in the world,” she says.
So Mrs. Herrera is regular mom, a wife to longtime husband Reinaldo Herrera, and “a normal grandma,” but still, one has to ask: Does she ever get out of bed with a clean face, throw on sweats, and head to the kitchen for breakfast? Of course not; she’s Carolina Herrera. “My children and I have this joke that even her dog is elegant. Like, maybe she gets picked up by a UFO and then dropped off in the morning,” Carolina Adriana Herrera jokes. “I can’t be that perfect. I always have a stain, or my hair is out of place, or my lipstick is running, and she just comes up here and has these perfect red lips, and I’m like, ‘Where is that lipstick from?’ And she’s like, ‘I always have one.’”
“She has always worn red lips, always, always, and she has never needed a mirror to put on her lipstick,” Carolina Adriana Herrera adds.
The color red has long defined the Carolina Herrera brand and stood as a symbol of elegance, sensuality, and the designer’s Hispanic roots—but Carolina Adriana Herrera tells Bazaar that it’s all much more personal and simple than that. “I grew up in red since I was born. I mean, yes, the red lips, but there was also a red room. The living room was red in our house in Caracas. There have always been red roses and red carnations and red dresses. I have red in my house: red chairs and red-and-white-striped fabric on the walls. Red has been the color in the Herrera household forever. And sometimes inspiration is in your DNA.”
Mrs. Herrera’s personal style has always mirrored her runway designs. Her limitless sophistication is one of her most iconic qualities—something Carolina Adriana Herrera says her kids admire and that also reminds her of her own grandmother.
“My [paternal] grandmother to me was this regal beauty who never took a day of sun, who had this beautiful dark hair. She loved to eat, and we would have chocolate all the time, but I remember thinking she was so wow, you know?” Carolina Adriana Herrera recalls. “And I think my children have that same relationship to my mother. My younger daughter will go have pizza with my mother, and she’ll say, ‘Hmmm, she doesn’t really belong here.’ But they’re very close. They’ll have fun and do crazy things together. So I see a parallel there. You admire them, but you also have this closeness that goes beyond that admiration.”
On the day of our talk, Carolina Adriana Herrera and Mrs. Herrera are in New York City, getting ready to welcome the perfumer’s older daughter, who is arriving from Madrid and busily texting her grandmother to make plans. “They have a relationship that I know nothing about, and I just hope to be that sort of grandma: involved and just easy and loving,” Carolina Adriana Herrera says.
Rosa Sanchez is the senior news editor at Harper's Bazaar, working on news as it relates to entertainment, fashion, and culture. Previously, she was a news editor at ABC News and, prior to that, a managing editor of celebrity news at American Media. She has also written features for Rolling Stone, Teen Vogue, Forbes, and The Hollywood Reporter, among other outlets.
