Saturday night marked a big moment for Balenciaga: The start of a new chapter under Pierpaolo Piccioli, who succeeded Demna as creative director of the couture house in May. A starry crowd showed up to support the Valentino alumnus (Anne Hathaway, Tracee Ellis Ross, FKA Twigs and even Meghan Markle).

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For his big debut, Piccioli went back to the work of Cristobal Balenciaga as a starting point, recalibrating (as he put it in the show notes) the founder's designs for the modern audience—and finishing them with a Piccioli flare, most visible in his use of vibrant colours. He opened the show with his take the sack dress—a silhouette that changed the landscape of fashion (and shocked many!) when Cristobal first debuted it in 1957—styled with opera gloves, black pumps, and giant bug-eye sunglasses. Other Cristobal signatures were reimagined, like the cocoon coat in a bright chartreuse, and the babydoll dress in an indigo halterneck. The famous 1967 wedding dress silhouette appeared as a cropped crepe top over a pencil skirt hemmed with 3-d floral embellishments, and again as a large leather off-shoulder cape. The balloon dress was subtly transformed into a merlot leather jacket, and more overtly visible in the bulbous bubble-hemmed coulottes, dresses and floor-skimming skirts, in black, emerald and candy-floss pink.

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Piccioli peppered in nods to his predecessor Demna, too, with baggy grunge-esque jeans and shorts, and futuristic jet-black sunglasses that wrapped around the model's head. Notable, though, was how he infused a couture sensibility into the construction of the collection, shifting simple wardrobe basics—leather jackets, T-shirts, chinos, sunglasses—into something extra-ordinary. Cristobel Balenciaga was known as the as 'The Master' of haute couture. Perhaps, then, that's Piccioli's most fitting homage to the house founder.

This story was first seen on ELLE UK.