Reinaldo Herrera, Husband of American Fashion Designer Carolina, Dead at 91

Reinaldo Herrera, an arbiter of the social set and international style, has died at the age of 91.

Herrera, whose name and likeness is linked to his fashion designer wife of 50-plus years Carolina, passed away Tuesday at his home in Manhattan.

Dashing, well-cultured and highly in-the-know, he was born Reinaldo Herrera Guevara in Caracas, where his father Don Reinaldo Herrera Uslar was the 4^th Marquis of Torre Casa. After attending high school as a boarder at the St. Mark’s School in Massachusetts, he then studied at Harvard University and Georgetown University. Herrera worked in Venezuela as a journalist on “Buenos Dias,” a morning news program there.

The Herreras wed in Caracas in 1968. Herrera had inherited the Spanish title of the 5^th Marquis de Torre Casa, following his father’s death four years prior. The Herreras would later relocate to New York, where he further established his mark in the media world while joining Vanity Fair, when Tina Brown was at the top of the masthead. Known to be charming, intellectual and curious throughouht his life, Herrera carried on at the Conde Nast-owned magazine after Graydon Carter succeeded Brown.

But it was his family that he valued above all else. He and Carolina shared four daughters: Carolina and Patricia Herrera Lansing from her first marriage and Mercedes Mendoza and Ana Luisa Bruchou.

Carolina Herrera once said of her husband, “I think I was madly in love with Reinaldo, when I was 15 or 16, but then he went to Europe. He has always been my great love.”

Before Carolina Herrera became a force in fashion with her own signature designer label, she was known as “Mrs. Reinaldo Herrera,” as noted by WWD first in 1959 and then again in 1964. However dated that now sounds, the pair were photographed time and again in all their stylish glory, and more often than not, smiling or laughing – with that indescribable, and sometimes mischievous, verve. Life, work, family, and travel can be a tricky combination to balance for many bold face names, but Carolina and Reinaldo Herrera appeared to have that formula down cold.

They relocated to the U.S. from Venezuela and were known to run with a fashionable crowd that included Nan Kempner, Carroll and Milton Petrie, Mica and Ahmet Ertegun, Chessy Rayner, Aileen Mehle, Estee Lauder, Bill Blass and other well-heeled New Yorkers. Throughout the decades, the designer’s name was always accompanied with her husband’s in WWD reports of their social outings. Before flying to Caracas in 1978 to be with their children for the holidays, the couple hosted some 80 friends including Truman Capote at a luncheon at Doubles.

“It’s important to have love in one’s life, because it makes us more human and incidentally, more beautiful,” the designer said on another occasion.

Although he never worked in Herrera’s New York-based company, the designer told WWD early on in her fashion career that he was “the godfather” of all of her collections. A style setter in his own right for decades Herrera was one of the select decision makers for the International Best Dressed List, which in the pre-internet era served as the gold standard.  In 2003, following the death of the list’s creator, the fashion publicist Eleanor Lambert, the list was bequeathed to Herrera, Amy Fine Collins, Carter, and Aimee Bell – all of whom are now Vanity Fair alumni. When the IBDL initially went all digital via Carter’s AirMail subscribers in 2022, Herrera was still helping to call the shots. He told WWD in 2019, “Taste is innate. You don’t learn taste. You learn to look at things.”

An inveterate and effortless dresser, Herrera truly helped to set the bar on his own too. In what could seem defiantly declasse in 1982, but was actually forward thinking, Herrera turned up at his wife’s fashion show at the New York Public Library in October of 1982 “making his own shocking countercultural fashion statement in blue jeans and a navy blazer.” He had such elan that he could pull off walking jauntily with his hands in the pockets of a tuxedo jacket.

Collins said Tuesday that Herrera was “the best of colleagues with sources galore for any story” that she might be working on, and he came up with superb story ideas for the magazine.

“He had an eye for style that we depended upon, when selecting honorees for the International Best-Dressed List. I believe Eleanor chose him as an heir to the IBDL, because he embodied precisely the kind of intelligent male elegance that she admired,” Collins said. “He even ate one of his favorite snacks, Fritos, elegantly.”

The legendary photographer Robert Mapplethorpe appreciated his high style, too, capturing Herrera in a black and white portrait, wearing a pinstripe suit with a black cape over one shoulder in New York in 1977. The year before, Mapplethorpe photographed Herrera laughing with Princess Margaret seated in beach chairs with an opened bottle of Beefeater gin in front of them. He looked like he lived – enjoying life. With his unmistakable style, Herrera appeared as himself in the 2017 film “Agnelli” and in the 2011 documentary “Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel.”

The quick-witted Herrera always seemed to have a twinkle in his eye and a joke at the ready – or a bit of information he would willingly pass on. Dinner at the Herreras was a night filled with freewheeling conversation about books, movies, travel, art, politics and more – but however serious that might sound, the talk was always punctuated with roars of laughter. Nothing was ever taken too seriously.

Herrera once demonstrated his guile at Willy Bogner’s “Crystal Dreams” extravaganza at The Pierre Hotel in 1982. Mingling amidst the Beautiful People and in search of a phone to call his wife, after being told the bistro didn’t have one, Herrera was given one thin dime from the cash register. “That’s one way to get a handout,” he quipped to WWD.

Like his wife, Herrera became an American citizen later in life. In 2017, he spoke out publicly criticizing the political unrest in Venezuela, after a nephew, Reinaldo Herrera, was kidnapped and killed, and another nephew Robrto Piccon Herrera, a pro-democracy activist, was held in a military jail.

Predeceased by his sister Carolina and a brother Gonzalo, Herrera is survived by his brother Luis Felipe, his wife Carolina, and their aforementioned four daughters.

A private funeral mass is planned for Friday morning at St. Vincent Ferrer in New York City. In keeping with his wishes, Herrera will be interred at a later date in Caracas, Venezuela, where he was born.

Editor’s Note: This article is in development.