Carolina Herrera

In 1957, she married Guillermo Behrens Tello, a Venezuelan landowner. They were blessed with two daughters, Mercedes and Ana Luisa. The couple divorced in 1964.

In 1968, she married Reinaldo Herrera Guevara, a magazine editor and the 5th Marqués of Torre Casa. They have two daughters, Carolina Adriana and Patricia Cristina.

She was born as María Carolina Josefina Pacanins y Niño on January 8, 1939, in Caracas, Venezuela, to Guillermo Pacanins Acevedo, an air force officer, and his wife, María Cristina Niño Passios. She was one of the four children of her parents.

She had a comfortable childhood, with a governess on hand and luxurious surroundings. Her mother and grandmother introduced her to the world of fashion, taking her to fashion shows in Paris and buying her outfits from reputed fashion houses.

As a child, she loved to sew clothes for her dolls but with age she became less interested in needlework. Later, she learned horse-riding and also became an avid reader.

In the fall of 1980, she brought about 20 dresses,—which her dressmaker made for her in Caracas—to New York City. She borrowed the Park Avenue apartment of an acquaintance and invited her friends to have a look at them. She decided to start a business of selling dresses after getting a positive response from her friends.

In Caracas, she met Armando de Armas, a publishing tycoon, who offered to fund her and within months, a design atelier and showroom, Carolina Herrera Ltd., was opened in New York. In April 1981, her first full collection was showcased at the New York's Metropolitan Club.

In 1981, her friend Diana Vreeland, then Editor-in-Chief of ‘Vogue’, suggested that she should design a clothing line. She made some samples in Caracas, and displayed her collection at Manhattan's Metropolitan Club which received positive critical acclaim.

Her business started quite small with just a dozen employees but soon grew rapidly and the socialites who knew her became some of her first devoted customers. Women like Estee Lauder, a cosmetics tycoon, and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the former First Lady, became her clients.

In the late 1980s, Spanish fragrance company ‘Puig’ licensed the name of ‘Carolina Herrera’ to develop and market a line of perfumes. In 1991, she created a top-selling men's scent, ‘Herrera for Men’, and regularly added new women's products to the line.

She was one of the first designers to make use of padded shoulders, believing that broader shoulders made a woman's waist appear smaller. Some of her most notable clients have been Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Duchess Diana de Melo, Michelle Obama, and actress Renée Zellweger.