Kanye West, James Harden and Anna Wintour walked into Cristobal Balenciaga’s original salon to witness Demna Gvasalia’s debut Balenciaga Fall 2021 Haute Couture collection for the house.

The Fall 2021 collection was every bit a love letter to the house’s founding father, packed with bold architectural shapes and exaggerated proportions and sticking to the couture presentation format by opening the show with all-black looks, to allow the audience to focus on the silhouettes. Once the impeccable tailoring of the pieces — a series of wool suits for men and women, black-washed denim, double-breasted floor-sweeping coats and padded satin stoles — had been clearly established, the designs become more daring in color, texture, cut and proportion. From a vibrant orange swing-back jacket and skirt to a hybrid of a parka and ball gown in a vivid cerulean hue, Gvasalia takes the haute couture customer somewhere sophisticated and elegant over the rainbow.

His couture debut had rigorous black tailoring, sober and austere; expansively extravagant gestures of taffeta; swathed stoles; gorgeous flowered embroideries; and the offhand drama of set-back collars. And haute couture jeans—hand-made on original American looms bought by Japanese manufacturers and commissioned there. To the point: The feat he managed with this ultra-aspirational collection was not to turn his back on the aesthetics of the street and underground but to give the inclusive values of a generation a sensational elevation.