PORTRAIT OF A LADY

The winds of fashion are catching up with Carolina Herrera: her timeless, classic clothes, long beloved by Jacqueline Onassis, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, Pat Buckley, Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, and C. Z. Guest, are ever more popular, and her new perfume, Flore, is a best-seller. The elegant, reticent designer and her debonair husband, Reinaldo, are not only Venezuela's answer to a royal couple, reports AMY FINE COLLINS, but also international icons of style

AMY FINE COLLINS

hot night at the wax museum" is how one guest described the glittery New Year's Eve dinner Carolina and Reinaldo Herrera threw last winter at their favorite restaurant, Mortimer's. At a moment when Manhattan's Upper East Side is traditionally emptied by the holiday exodus, the Herreras, with more acceptances than anticipated, had almost found themselves short a few seats. Reinaldo, dashing in blacktie, and Carolina, a Goyaesque vision in emeralds and a long black sheath, glided in concert to greet late arrivals. Separating couples—Reinaldo taking the woman's arm, Carolina the man's—the Herreras too branched apart, like estuaries of the same river, as they found places for their last guests. Their streaming movements could have been choreographed, so smooth was the execution of their hostly duties. Assembled in the two rooms, as one young reveler noted, were "four generations of serious partygoers"—a heterogeneous, international, and interracial composite of diplomats, artists, writers, movie stars, and socialites. There tasting the capon with currant sauce and chocolate souffle were Bianca Jagger and Valerie Perrine, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Norman Mailer, Anne Slater and Cari Modine. As the first hours of the new year came and went, and guests trickled out into the night, the Herreras stayed on dancing, with their friends, with each other—handsome, happy, confident, and admired.

As it happens, 1995 has given Venezuelan-born fashion designer Carolina Herrera ample reason to celebrate. On the first day of the year—Inauguration Day in Albany—New York's First Lady, Libby Pataki, showed up looking unexpectedly chic in a Carolina Herrera velvet-trimmed camel coat, brown suit, and cognac-colored handbag. Herrera's new perfume, Flore, launched last September, is proving to be a hit—her third in a row. Helen O'Hagan, a consultant for Saks Fifth Avenue (one of Herrera's major retailers), reports that not only is Flore now one of its top 10 brands but the store's sales of Carolina Herrera clothing have "doubled in the last two years." And, according to firm president Michael Pellegrino, the company itself has grown by 20 percent in the past year.

The fashion barometer, apparently, has shifted back to Herrera's point of view. For the first time in recent memory, fall-fashion stories bumped hard news off covers—not just in the trade papers and glossies but also in the general media. Classic clothes are back, the reports proclaimed, conservative chic has arrived, G.O.P. style rules—if not yet in the White House, then at least on the runway. For fall '95, the trendiest designers in Milan and Paris as well as New York reined in their usual outre antics to show exactly the kind of elegant staples Herrera has been quietly advocating for 14 years: just-to-the-knee dresses with matching jackets, deftly tailored luncheon suits, and figure-enhancing gowns. Turning the fall season even more emphatically in a Herrera-esque direction (a position as steady as a compass point) were all the homages paid to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis—a close friend whom Herrera alone dressed during the last dozen years of her life.

"Carolina looked life an

angel—but you could see the power behind it all.

Herrera is not one to call attention to such self-aggrandizing fashion ironies. Her conversation can flow almost anywhere, from child rearing to journalism to Venezuelan politics, as long as it does not linger on herself. "It's boring to talk about yourself. That is the definition of a bore," she declares firmly one day, stroking her toy poodle Alfonso in her Seventh Avenue penthouse office. Almost severe in its chic understatement, the room seems to be the exact objective correlative of her character: precise, ordered, intimate, and vaguely exotic. Silver-framed family photos crowd most surfaces (more are stashed in drawers), while a reproduction of Andy Warhol's portrait of her stares impassively from one wall. "Andy made three of them. One is in the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Another is in Germany. The third is in our house in New York. They're all similar, except the color of the eye shadow," she giggles. "He painted too much makeup on my face. Blondes have to be very careful, you know. Otherwise they end up looking like bimbos"—a word she pronounces "beembos" in her fast and musical clip. "She talks," says her closest male friend, the writer Taki Theodoracopulos, "like a spick. Which is very cute, adorable, and flirtatious. But I wonder if her English isn't perfect at home with Reinaldo."

A youthful 56, Herrera looks even better today than in the 1979 Warhol picture. More sure of herself than ever, she has pared down her look to a more effective simplicity. Her figure is so trim that the

heavy brown cashmere turtleneck tucked into her trousers fails to create even the tiniest bulge below her waistline. In spite of her casual attire, there is an aura of regal rectitude about Herrera, a strictness of comportment that seems a throwback to a more decorous age.

"With her beauty and his family, the Herreras are our royal couple," states a fellow Venezuelan residing in New York. Says Harold Koda, associate curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, "Her looks really do belong to another period." Movie producer Richard Roth recalls, "I remember seeing her in England in the 60s, when she was staying at Kensington Palace—she and Reinaldo are friends of Princess Margaret and the Queen Mother. There she was, very beautiful, with a snood, looking almost like she came from another era. I see her now a completely modem woman."

errera, nee Maria Carolina Josefina Pacanins y Nino (the name Pacanins is Catalan), is without question the product of another age—a result maybe not so much of time (she was born in Caracas in 1939) as of place. The codes of conduct in Caracas, even at mid-century, were still heavily suffused with an antiquated colonial flavor. Descended from landowners and statesmen

who had been in Venezuela for some 400 years, Carolina was the second of four daughters (still very close today) bom to Guillermo and Maria Cristina Pacanins. The four Pacanins girls were brought up to be "very organized and with a lot of discipline," Carolina says. (The word "organize" recurs like a leitmotif in Herrera's speech.) A photograph of Carolina at age four shows a tiny, precociously poised creature projecting an astonishing degree of selfpossession. "Carolina is the most consistent person," her younger sister Alexandra says. "She has always been a perfectionist." Guillermo Pacanins and his brother bred racehorses, and Carolina, an accomplished athlete, excelled at jumping and dressage. "My horse was my passion. My father said he thought any day I might start whinnying."

Her passion for sports, of course, did not preclude a fascination with clothes. "Carolina had such an imagination. She always used to change her clothes around," says Anita de Zuloaga, the mother of her childhood friend Ana Mercedes. "If the dress was supposed to button in the front, she'd try it on backwards. Carolina used to make her own perfume too. And she and my daughter were always in my closet!" When Carolina was 13 her grandmother took her to see the couture collection of the great Cristobal Balenciaga—whom she still holds in the highest esteem.

Another good friend was Carolina Herrera, the younger sister of Reinaldo, the worldly scion of an old landowning family, who lived mostly in Europe. Oscar Molinari, a cousin of Reinaldo's who sometimes resided at the Herrera hacienda, La Vega ("the Valley"), recalls Carolina Pacanins's visits. "Though Carolina was there to visit Reinaldo's sister, there was always in the air the idea that she loved Reinaldo." Carolina herself states without hesitation, "Reinaldo was my first love."

For his part, Reinaldo (now Vanity Fair's special-projects editor) remembers "first seeing Carolina at age 11 or 12, playing with my sister. I thought of her as a beautiful child— she looked like a doe. Then, after her debut, I began seeing her at parties, and we had a flirtation. Her older sister was supposed to be the most beautiful in the family, but I thought Carolina was. She had a waist smaller than her head.

Do you know that is the perfect proportion? I always liked her, but then she married."

While Reinaldo was living out of the country, the 18-year-old Carolina impulsively married another wellto-do landowner, Guillermo Behrens Tello. Behrens, by most accounts, was a charming but difficult man.

Ana Luisa Behrens, the younger of the two daughters from this first marriage, now a fashion editor at Mademoiselle, says, "Basically, my father was a spoiled child from a very good family who was not ready to get married." (The older daughter, Mercedes, the mother of Carolina's three grandsons, lives in Caracas.) At 25, Carolina divorced Behrens. "It was a huge scandal in my family," she admits. (Behrens has since remarried at least once.)

arolina and her two daughters moved back in with her family, and she began working afternoons helping out with public relations at the Caracas branch of Pucci. The oil-rich city was entering its great period of wealth and stability, and Venezuelan women counted among the important patrons of European couture houses. The queen of the glamorous Venezuelans was

\y Reinaldo's jet-setting mother, Maria Teresa "Mimi" Herrera, a friend of the Duchess of Windsor and Greta Garbo, whose ravishing ly ornamental presence graced all the smartest parties around the world. At about the time Carolina's marriage was dissolving, Reinaldo, having just ended an involvement with Christina Onassis, returned to Caracas and re-entered Carolina's life, this time making good on their earlier flirtation.

The couple legitimized their romance in 1968 at a ceremony held at her older sister's house. Carolina wore a short-sleeved pale-yellow organdy dress of her own design. For their honeymoon they visited Reinaldo's friend the great stage designer Oliver Messel at his Barbados home, a romantic structure renowned for the Rousseau-like fantasy of its jungle garden. As a wedding gift, Messel gave Carolina his mother's 18th-century pearl earrings, which

Carolina presented to Viscount Linley (the son of Messel's nephew Lord Snowdon and Princess Margaret) when he married Serena Stanhope in 1993.

"Oliver was my great hero—a genius, my great inspiration," Carolina says. "Every time I work on a collection I think of him, and wish he could be in the audience."

The Herreras settled in the 65-room La Vega (built in 1590, it is said to be the oldest continuously inhabited house in the Western Hemisphere), along with Carolina's in-laws, the elegant Mimi and the equally glamorous Reinaldo senior, whom socialite C. Z. Guest calls "one of the best-looking men I ever saw." (The

older Herreras were also known as the Marques and Mar-

quesa de Torre Casa, a Spanish title granted to an ancestor in 1722; the younger Herreras inherited the title in 1972, though they relinquished it in 1992. "We only use it when we're traveling in Europe, to get better hotel rooms!" Reinaldo says.) To this remarkable household, the young Herreras added two daughters, Carolina Adriana, now 26 and a segment producer for a cable-TV fashion program, and Patricia Cristina, a 22-year-old student at Brown University. The Herreras established a family life not unlike their parents'—a traditional, correct upbringing for their children, combined with extensive travel.

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Herrera alone dressed Jackie 0 for the last

dozen years of her life.

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Carolina's enthusiasm for creating and wearing clothing matched her mother-inlaw's (one retainer still in residence at La Vega, Julieta, was constantly occupied with seamstress duties), with the difference that the younger woman had more adventuresome tastes. She patronized Zandra Rhodes and the Italian couturier Walter Albini, for example, now nearly forgotten but one of the most inventive and influential designers of the 70s. Ana Luisa remembers vividly her mother dressed "in a beige shirt, green pants, and platforms. And we went to the seamstress every day of our life! For her clothes. For ours. For curtains for the house. Or something for the doll. All the salespeople in the stores loved her!"

eanwhile, Herrera had also been attracting acclaim for her sartorial sizzle well outside of Caracas. She appeared on the International Best-Dressed List from 1971 to 1980, when she ascended to its Hall of Fame. Inevitably, she caught the attention of the legendary taste arbiter Diana Vreeland, whose quick eye for talent and acute taste for the exotic were intoxicated by what she called Carolina's "bombe style." Jewelry designer Kenneth Jay Lane notes that Vreeland and Herrera had similar domestic arrangements. "Like [Vreeland's husband] Reed, Reinaldo always organized the social life and the dinners. Most husbands couldn't care less." The two women also shared a fundamental conservatism tempered by a taste for life's more bizarre manifestations. Like Vreeland, Carolina befriended Warhol and his circle, and negotiated, without any loss of dignity, the hedonistic scene at such nightspots as Studio 54 (the late Steve Rubell was an intimate friend)—always as curious spectator more than active participant. Carolina Herrera also was a very early supporter of Robert Mapplethorpe, whom she had met on a flight to Mustique. His first glamour photo was a blackand-white portrait of her taken at New York's Mayfair hotel (now hanging in the Herrera showroom), in which she is mysteriously adorned with a hat and veil. One of his last pictures, taken when he was confined to a specially rigged wheelchair, is a second portrait of Herrera, this time a haunting image almost ravaged in its severity. When he died, she paid homage to Mapplethorpe in her collection with black velvet motorcycle jackets decorated with gold studs and zippers. Though at the time this tribute was ridiculed by some as a declasse digression, Harold Koda praises Herrera as the first to elevate biker gear to high fashion, now a couture cliche.

During one visit to New York, Reinaldo recalls, the Herreras were dining at Winston and C. Z. Guest's country house with Vreeland, Count Rudi Crespi (the publicist who had introduced the Italian designers Valentino and Fendi to America), and his wife, Consuelo. Vreeland and Crespi were "pushing Carolina like mad," Consuelo says, to try designing clothing professionally. They obviously had targeted a willing victim, because she immediately acted upon their suggestion.

In September 1980, Herrera presented her first collection—20 ensembles sewn in Caracas by three of the city's best dressmakers—in a borrowed Park Avenue apartment. "The clothes"—stately gazar dresses (a tribute to Balenciaga) and superbly tailored suits—"were fantastic," she says. "I called up people and said, 'Come and see what I did!"' Martha's, Saks, Bergdorf, and friends such as Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia came and wanted to buy everything. "Except I had to tell them I didn't have anything! I only had samples. I could not fill the orders. I had only been testing to see if it would work." Carolina returned to Caracas, and by chance ended up at a cocktail party where she ran into Armando de Armas, a self-made publishing magnate. A spread on the Herreras had just appeared in the first issue of one of his magazines, the Spanish edition of Harper's Bazaar. "I went up to him and thanked him for the article," she says. "And he asked me what I was up to. So I told him I was about to open a dress company. He told me that he would call me the next day, and I of course thought, This gentleman will never call me back. But on Monday he called. Then my people from New York met his people in Miami, and by Thursday we had signed"— creating a solid 50-50 partnership.

T T errera opened a diminutive showXX. room on East 57th Street, and moved her husband and daughters to New York. While on holiday in Mustique in February 1981 she sketched the designs for her first show, which took place in April at the Metropolitan Club. A royal flush of society pals—C. Z. Guest, Chessy Rayner, Nan Kempner, Jerry Zipkin—turned out, along with retailers, press, and, as Wom- en 's Wear Daily reported, "a supportive husband flashing diamond cufflinks." Eleanor Lambert, the doyenne of fashion publicity, recalls Herrera's appearance on the runway at the end of the show. "She looked like a beautiful angel, so feminine, so delicate, so sweet—but you could see the power behind it all. Around the same time, other well-dressed society women tried to be designers, too, but no one ever succeeded like Carolina."

The collection gave her an immediate identity in the fashion cosmos. The sleeve treatments, "puffed, tucked, outlined, winged, lantern-shaped, and often out of control," as Women's Wear wrote somewhat condescendingly in its review, moved the trade paper to anoint her "Our Lady of the Sleeves." Still, the responses were generally favorable, and, as Eleanor Lambert observes, Herrera's designs proved uncannily prescient. "Her clothes arrived at exactly the right time, when the whole big-sleeve and big-shoulder thing in fashion was just getting started." This was, after all, the dawn of the 80s, the moment not only for big shoulders but big money and big spending—all neatly symbolized by the conspicuously well-heeled Nancy Reagan, a close Herrera friend and customer.

In New York the Herreras were eagerly sought-after by the decade's newly energized social set—Reinaldo prized for his gallant manners and gifts as a raconteur, Carolina for her graciousness, talent, and beauty. "Out there is a world of boa constrictors," says Glenn Bernbaum, proprietor of Mortimer's. "And she's a lady. She doesn't try to stir up trouble. She is not part of that venal set." Taki's wife, Alexandra Theodoracopulos, says of her closest female friend, "Carolina never talks about work, never complains. And she makes her own phone calls, never her secretary."

Herrera's clients from the 80s have remained a faithful lot—philanthropist Judy Peabody and her daughter, Elizabeth, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, socialite Pat Buckley, Alexandra Theodoracopulos, Consuelo Crespi, Fernanda Niven, Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia, C. Z. Guest, and Princess Marina of Greece. And Herrera in turn has reciprocated their loyalty. Though many designers trade on their client list for publicity, Herrera's customers depend on her discretion. "When Jackie started coming to Carolina, it was at a point when she had been losing friends because people had been taking advantage of her," says Consuelo Crespi. "And she hadn't been going out much. She wore nothing but raincoats and trousers—after a certain age not necessarily the best look. Carolina completely respected her privacy, and so renewed Jackie's interest in dressing up and going out." Explains Herrera, "I don't believe in naming clients to get press. I hated it when I was a couture client. If the dresses don't sell themselves, there's something wrong. Once, I saw another designer at a party, and he boasted to me that he had 46 women there wearing his dresses—and he asked me how many did I have? I told him just one, me! When I did Caroline Kennedy's wedding dress, there were cameramen waiting outside the showroom on the street, offering money for a peek. We had to make two boxes, a fake one and a real one, in order to sneak it by them. It was the same with Marla Maples's dress."

"It's very attractive, very intelligent, how she's handled her career," says Bill Blass. "It adds to her mystery and allure. She even refused to appear in her perfume ads. Carolina pays attention to the consumer, not to the fucking press—and you can say 'fucking.' "

% V 7" hen hard times hit after the '87 W crash, and other fashion houses floundered, Herrera fell right into a silken safety net. While attending a Fragrance

Foundation dinner, Herrera had noticed a strange man hovering at her side, apologizing for having mistaken her for the actress Linda Evans. "And who are you?" she inquired. "I was dumbfounded, speechless, embarrassed," relates Dr. Fernando Aleu, president of Compar, the distributing arm of Puig, the Spanish perfume giant. So he blurted out the one thought on his mind: "You smell good." She replied, "I make this fragrance myself." Aleu continues: "I liked her, and I liked her fragrance, so I said, 'We would like to market this scent.' And then she told me that she already had a commitment to develop a perfume. By this time we were already conversing in Spanish, so I used an expression we have in our language. I said, 'If your deal develops a flat tire, I would like to hear from you.'" Five weeks later, Aleu's secretary informed him that there was a lady on hold for him "insisting she had a flat tire. It was Carolina calling to say, 'If your partners in Spain are interested, so am I.'"

The fragrance Herrera had been wearing—concocted out of jasmine essences and inspired by the aromatic spring flowers growing outside her bedroom windows at both her childhood home and La Vega—turned out to be the base for her

eponymous first perfume, introduced in 1988. Herrera for Men—one of the few successful masculine scents ever launched by a woman—followed in 1991, and the newest entry, Flore, arrived three years later. (Together they generate $20 to $30 million annually, from which Herrera's company earns a royalty.) Says Dr. Aleu, a physician turned perfumer who has crisscrossed America with Herrera to promote the fragrances, "I'm astonished at the vibrancy of this woman. The bubbles keep rising. To watch her with the salespeople and the buying public is incredible." Herrera's common touch, Aleu says, comes from a combination of queenly ease with people of all backgrounds and "shrewdness. She understands that it doesn't hurt—that people like to be recognized." Michael Pellegrino, who has also accompanied Herrera on promotional trips, says, "It's surprising how a lady who has led such a privileged life can relate to many types of people. Halston, whom I used to work for, would not meet his public."

At the end of last year Herrera's original Venezuelan investor, Armando de Armas, sold his 50 percent interest to Puig. Accordingly, the Spanish company's plans for Herrera, Aleu explains, are expanding. One project in its germinal phase is the development of Carolina Herrera cosmetics. "We have a very vital brand name in all of South America. We are a Spanish company, and Spanish imports have a tremendous following in South America, so why not cosmetics?" Though Herrera's couture line—retailing for between $1,500 and $6,000—barely pays for itself (designs in her lowerpriced Studio line sell for between $300 and $450, and her licensed knitwear for a bit more), Aleu says Puig will unconditionally support it. "We are here for the long run. The plan is to do everything."

The week before Carolina Herrera's fall show, the designer appears already engaged in "doing everything." Deborah Hughes, Herrera's director of public relations (she arrived 12 years ago as a model), has completed the delicate task of seating the show. Herrera's spectacles are unusual in that her paparazziattracting socialite friends are all placed toward the back, while press and store buyers are assigned the choice frontrow spots. "Without these people, there wouldn't be any business," Hughes explains sensibly. Hughes has also just finished mixing the audiotape for the show. "Everything here is done in-house, down to the styling," Herrera states proudly. "Everything you see on the runway comes from here," she says, pointing to her forehead.

Even though it is collection time, the showroom atmosphere is (in Bill Blass's words) "serene, peaceful, and quiet—states of being not usually associated with fashion." Unlike the former, minuscule 57th Street showroom, "where we all sat together around one big table," Hughes says, each room in the new, 15,000-square-foot space is designated for a specific purpose. There is a sample room for the Carolina Herrera line, supervised by a whitesmocked technical wizard named Rick, and a special area for private clients' made-to-order fittings. There is also an archive room, where retired samples are stored, and a separate atelier and showroom for the Studio line.

Herrera, Hughes, Rick, and Bill Hamilton, the design assistant, are now gathered in the room where final fittings for the show take place. Herrera greets the newest toy poodle in her menagerie as he bounds joyfully into the room.

"Gaston," she cries, scooping up the quivering puppy, "your first fitting!"

The Belgian model Ingrid, whom Carolina used in an ad just before Guess? picked her up (and who will be the show's bride), is trying on a polite celadon suit that tames but does not disguise the love-goddess contours of her body. "If it's not the idea I first had in mind, I kill it now. Better to kill it here than to have it killed in public on the runway!" Herrera buttons the jacket, smooths the skirt, and steps back, arms folded and head cocked. "Let's leave off the blouse. It'll look less matronly. Should we give her the green bag or brown bag to carry? Let's vote," she says democratically, though her eye already seems to have locked on the first accessory choice. "I hate huge bags. I only carry money, lipstick, and a handkerchief." After a quick lunch in her office, the designer returns to find Stephanie, the house model, dazzling the assembled in a slinky purpleand-black one-shoulder column dress in silk charmeuse and satin. Walking fluidly toward her reflection, Stephanie beams, while around her discussions about shoes take place.

"I hate black shoes with white soles. It distracts me so much," Herrera says heatedly. "It's all I see when I watch Elsa Klensch. We blacken the soles for the shows, and I do it with my own shoes too. Everything must be soigne.

"I don't understand dirty hair, tattoos, dirty jeans any more than Chinese. And I hate retro looks. Naturalness in fashion is so important. I also have a mania against heavy dresses. If you're not comfortable, you can't look elegant. I love simplicity. I hate excess. It is a disaster! Extravagance and glamour have nothing to do with excess. It comes from the way you move, the way you accessorize, the perfection of a fit. Style is a very important part of personality. Appearances are how judgments are made."

Though most designers renounced strong shoulders several seasons back, Herrera persists with them (she believes they minimize the waist and give the figure an erect bearing), just as she never varied her to-the-knee skirt length when hemlines dropped. Like jewel necklines, elbowlength sleeves, and four-ply silk-crepe tuxedo pantsuits, these are the hallmarks of Herrera. "I have very definite ideas, a distinct point of view. To survive in this business you have to believe in something, stay with it, and be secure about it. If you want to shock the public, you are out of control and about to become a fashion victim."

The following Monday morning Herrera, Hughes, Hamilton, the hairstylist Stefano, a battalion of hair and makeup assistants, and 20 models gather backstage at the Gertrude Pavilion in Bryant Park. Professional dressers from the Ground Crew station themselves beside racks of clothing that have been tagged with Polaroids and marked with a model's name. Camera crews from more than a dozen different television programs—including the cable show Carolina junior works for—mill about, waiting for their turn to interview the designer. Reinaldo and daughter Patricia drift in, accompanied by a Brown roommate.

Whatever her inward state may be at this moment, outwardly Herrera is the picture of sangfroid. The mannishness of her crisp navy pantsuit is relieved by a diamond-and-ruby flower brooch Reinaldo had Van Cleef & Arpels assemble out of the clasp of his mother's pearl necklace. Mannequin Teresa Stewart, already in place next to the rack of clothes she will soon model, says, "Mrs. Herrera knows exactly what she wants. Most of the time designers are unsure, influenced by the people around them, changing things at the last minute. She is strong, secure, but not a bitch." Rachel Smaltz, one of the Ground Crew dressers, says, "Most designers keep their distance from the backstage personnel. But she introduces herself to everyone. She's a regal lady."

Minutes later 73 ensembles flash by on the runway. The clothes—not the models or the audience members—are the stars of this show. Sunset-hued daytime dresses, perfect backdrops for jewelry, are followed by faux-fur-lined powder-blue coats and sleek black evening dresses glistening with artfully placed silver teardrops and rhinestone-toothed zippers (anticipating a detail seen a few months later on the Paris couture runways). Just before the finale the catwalk ignites with a series of tuxedo suits in a brilliant spectrum of stained-glass tones, all accessorized with velvet flats. Herrera has delivered on her simple but difficult promise, repeated endlessly to the eager swarms of backstage reporters, to present a collection that is "all about dressing well." Afterward, the models march out for an encore and one more round of applause. And then Carolina Herrera appears, diffidently triumphant, taking Ingrid by the hand. So exalted is she by the accolades that she accidentally steps on the edge of the bride's train. Thwarting a potentially awkward moment with consummate, splitsecond grace, she sinks into a deep and balletic curtsy.