Carolina Herrera Very Good Girl- The must have red stiletto
Carolina Herrera continues exploring contemporary femininity with Very Good Girl, a fearless new Eau de Parfum rooted in the legendary duality that defines the Good Girl family of fragrances. Manifesting a message of empowerment, Karlie Kloss embodies the perfume in a dress specially designed by creative director Wes Gordon. With his flair for updating the sartorial codes of the house, the creation echoes the heart emblem that defines the campaign and is a testimonial to that most Herrera of colors: a
powerful and purely pigmented red.
There are three ingredients to making a good dress according to Wes Gordon: “design, fabric, and color,” and he turned to the house archives when thinking about the arrestingly architectural sleeve for Karlie’s
dress for the visual campaign. When Mrs. Herrera showed her debut collection in 1981, it drew rave reviews with an elegant showcase that launched her into the glittering heights of the fashion cosmos in New York. Industry bible Women’s Wear Daily anointed her ‘our lady of the sleeve,’ for her stunning display of sleeves in varied sizes and shapes. She has since explained that she constructs a garment thinking of a woman’s face as a painting, with the sleeves and shoulders providing the frame. Many ingenious iterations have since strutted down the catwalk under her watch over the decades, and this prominent design feature remains a prominent house signature today.
But having taken inspiration from this storied past, Wes Gordon has further developed the idea with a sculptural new shape, resulting in a modern take made exclusively for the Very Good Girl shoot, saying: “Carolina Herrera
is a celebration of exuberance, of living loudly and proudly, and a bold gesture on the sleeve encapsulates that perfectly”. He chose Silk Gazar for its ability to hold such a dramatic shape, and when juxtaposed with a plunging V-neck creates a vivacious echo of the heart emblem that’s the focal essence of the visual campaign.
The final essential ingredient of the Very Good Girl campaign is color, and from her lipstick to her shoes, Karlie Kloss is adorned in a fiery, Latin, passionate red. In Andy Warhol’s memorable portrait from 1979, the eye is instantly drawn to her trademark lacquered lips, and as Wes Gordon reminds us, “The Herrera woman doesn’t blend in. She stands out, she wants to be remembered, and red is a color that gets you noticed”. This particularly warm and deeply pigmented shade has historically always been a part of Mrs. Herrera’s impeccable style and has gone on to become something of a house hue. She describes it as “neither orange nor red, it’s a special color, which we call Herrera red,” and both archival and recent collections draw their inspiration from this iconic shade
By the 1990s, it had become a house color. At a time when men dominated business, Carolina Herrera arguably invented the female power suit, producing multiple versions in that deeply empowering shade of red. It remains a recurrent source of inspiration under the helm of Wes Gordon, for whom an exploration of duality defines the Herrera woman. Most of his collections feature striking examples; most recently at pre-fall 2021, where he deftly combines evening glamor with modern ease in head-to-toe Herrera red.
This duality which has embodied the Good Girl universe since its debut in 2016 is also a key component of Very Good Girl Eau de Parfum. The fragrance draws its strength from the potency of the rose, that distinctive scent that is a prominent player in the history of fragrance. Its most indulgent nuances, bringing to mind a powdery red romance, were picked out by perfumer Louise Turner. Ever the non-conformist, she has continued the rebellious Good Girl streak with a stunning final burst: a veiled background of Vetiver. A traditionally masculine ingredient in perfumery, it plays a key part in the only men’s fragrance in the family, Bad Boy, and this new fragrance adds a surprising and contemporary aesthetic.
The impossibly high stiletto of the Good Girl bottle has become a global
phenomenon, and with Very Good Girl, this emblem of modernity has acquired
a sensual lacquered finish. A fabulous visual burst of Herrera Red, it’s a bold symbol of passion and Spanish Alegria di Vivir, making it the most Good Girl and most Carolina Herrera of any fragrances to this day.