Carolina A. Herrera likes to spray the perfume into the air so that the room is subtly filled with future memories. “It is the same smell, but perceived in a different way, interacting with the space,” explains the creative director of Carolina Herrera Beauty. She is a woman who opens doors and helps to publicize interesting people and projects, most of them entrepreneurs from very different fields.
Master in the art of mixing environments, spinning conversations and sharing experiences, she presents the new Good Girl Blush Elixir in the Sevillian mountains. “She is more sensual and intense than Good Girl Blush, for a confident and strong woman who wants a little more,” she describes.
“A perfume can open doors or close them, if you are with someone who doesn’t like it, but it invites you to talk, that’s for sure.” says Carolina. Since she was little, she was clear that she liked to go on her own “she hated being pigeonholed, labels, closed groups… I don’t like feeling tied down. I am interested in everything, I am very restless. I am attracted to people who are not conventional, but also to those who are, because sometimes I say, how wonderful! I have very different friends naturally because it is enriching, fun and allows you to investigate what you like and make very different plans,” she points out.
“I am romantic and very idealistic. Practical, but at the same time I fly. “I cry at movies – the last time was with One Love, the biography of Bob Marley –, I get emotional at books…” she defines herself. She always has one in her hands and her gaze wanders, curious, whenever there is one in sight. Give books as gifts, a rarity in these days of so much forward thinking and so little patience. “There is a hippy soul in me, without being one. I have a nomadic part and, at the same time, I am very homely. Women are multifaceted and my children have also inherited that certain way of understanding life,” she says.
Good Girl Blush Elixir incorporates unexpected patchouli. “I’ve liked it all my life. Since university. Here it is very sophisticated, elevated to the Herrera house, just like in Nightfall Patchouli, my favorite from the Confidential collection. But I also still buy the one from herbalists,” confesses Carolina A.Herrera. She researches, but does not follow a method to get inspiration and give guidelines on perfumes. “These are things that stay in my memory bank, in my subconscious, and that suddenly come out.” Like the memories of her life in Seville: “The incense, the resins, the myrrh, Holy Week, the emotion, the churches, the orange blossom in spring… They are smells that fascinate me,” she says.
With Good Girl, linked to her groundbreaking stiletto bottle, she has hit the key to go very far on a heel and has reached the top two in sales worldwide. That’s why the family doesn’t stop growing. “I hope we have many more shoes and in pairs, because you have to buy two at a time, like mom says. We are going to populate the world with Good Girl shoes,” predicts Carolina.
Carolina A. Herrera lived for a few years in Seville, where she established friendships such as Gioconda Scott, a unique and close chef, a perfect symbiosis of British aristocracy, a well-traveled life, childhood and residence in the Sevillian mountains. Spring and the smell of orange blossom “similar to the iconic jasmine of Casa Herrera” awaken memories of South Carolina in Carolina. Here are some clues from her expert guidance.
Active disconnection.
An hour and a half from Seville, in the heart of the mountains, a 16th century farmhouse converted into an atypical luxury refuge with 18 rooms and a structure designed for privacy and retreat or shared events. Charlotte Scott, niece of actor Christopher Lee, discovered it in the seventies and transformed its spaces as a vital project with soul and good taste. Writers, aristocrats and even Kate Moss or Damien Hirst are lost here, and you can live experiences such as cooking over the fire of her daughter, Gioconda Scott, a renowned chef who works wonders with local products. Picnics in the middle of the countryside, dinners among huge vats of wine and oil, painting classes, yoga, three and five day horseback safaris through the Sierra Morena sleeping in glam tents… Cazalla de la Sierra (Seville).
Read, eat, think. Gastronomic workshops by Gioconda Scott. In her house, an old pottery workshop, it hosts meetings and reflections with different authors of film, literature, art… Gioconda transfers the dialogue to the table with flavors and textures inspired by these illustrated quotes. Dolores Quintanilla, 32B Carmona (Seville).
Start the day well. The breakfasts at Casa Orzáez are famous. Their specialty: artisan cheeses made from raw goat milk of the native breed. Betis,67 Seville.
Handmade hats. They have been made in Antonio García since 1847. Alcaicería de la loza, 25.
Buenos Aires. Díaz Fans. Painted, silk, openwork, sophisticated or everyday…An essential basic. Sierpes, 71.
Walk through art. An old monastery that was converted into a china and Chinese porcelain factory active until 1982. The Expo of ’92 restored its shine and is now an active museum for which it is worth visiting La Cartuja. Andalusian Center of Contemporary Art. Americo Vespucci, 2.
The beaches of Cadiz. “Zahara, Bolonia and Tarifa are full of memories and my children love Sotogrande,” says Carolina.