Every so often, a show is so thrillingly great that it gives us the ultimate reset, rejuvenation, and revival. Pierpaolo Piccioli's first Couture show as creative director at Balenciaga did just that. Seated under the blinding sun at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris—a sprawling mid-20th-century student campus—Piccioli reminded us that he is one of the masters at crafting captivating, clever couture collections.

This was a celebration of the "intent and essence" of Balenciaga: Piccioli views couture as the perfect place for experimentation and engineering. So, he meticulously engineered 'Amsilk', an advanced, bioengineered silk alternative, created via DNA editing and laboratorial protein engineering to make a fossil fuel-free and renewable silk, similar to a spider's silk, with a strength 2.5 times that of steel. Contemporary couture.

Piccioli literally created 3D digital scans of "the humans within" who would be wearing the pieces, with the belief that change comes from the inside. Through this technique, he adapted each individual's attitudes into poses, then formed a basis for molding leather as internal carapaces to magic up a specific systematic structure.

With the poignant sounds of Alexandre Desplat's The Imitation Game echoing throughout the gardens, brilliant bouncing feathers in exaggerated volumes came in the sweetest shades of dusty pink, fire-engine red, cloudy grey, electric blue, and that sherbet pink in its cocooning silhouette that bubbled up around the model. The feathers—like Gigi Hadid's epic all-black headdress—were made in collaboration with Philip Treacy.

Elsewhere, Piccioli's razor-sharp tailoring came through on slick coats and cashmere dresses, plunging necklines, sculptural trapezoidal bodices, and embroidery that oscillated ever so elegantly on dresses and skirts. "This collection is the result of the work of the people in the atelier, human beings who are couture—because couture is made by the people who live it," Piccioli said.

Piccioli has undoubtedly hit his stride at Balenciaga. Not many shows give us chills while sitting in 35-degree heat.

balenciaga.com