Drew Henry is the newest player in the great game of creative-director musical chairs that’s been running throughout brands and houses for the past couple of years. It’s the fashion for corporate searches for new blood to probe behind studio doors to locate team members with pedigrees of working for proven great creative bosses. Courrèges management now has itself a designer in this class: Henry has worked for Daniel Lee at Burberry, for Jonathan Anderson and for Phoebe Philo when her own brand was starting up, and before that when she was at Celine.

“I think there’s something with this brand that I find very warm. It’s not cold at all for me,” Henry said in a preview. “There’s a little bit of me trying to find a bit more eclecticism in it, because it’s not just one thing.” South African by birth, Henry relocated from London to Paris in May after the recent departure of Nicolas Di Felice from Courrèges, who was himself hired as an unknown after working for Raf Simons and Nicolas Ghesquière.

So just a few weeks into the job Henry got to show the world who he is, or rather, give us an inkling of his own tastes, and what he’ll extract from the brand’s heritage. From his first outing today, it’s safe to say the designer hasn’t been hired as a ‘continuity’ appointment. He loves unravelling edges and undone belts, playful layerings of dresses that might be vintage, Courrèges split-hem pants, and the random surprises of colorful, eccentric hats and gridded garlands of 3D flowers. “I struggle with the neatness and the cleanness [of Courrèges],” he admitted. “I’m trying to get into what the softer side could be.”

There were chalky pastels, pops of lime and Kelly green, and a reprise of Courrèges’s famous Space Age bootees from his spring 1964 Moon Girl haute couture collection. Henry found a tomato-red futuristic cloche which had been crushed into a hat box for decades. When he looked it up, he realized it had only appeared in black and white fashion photography. He had more of them replicated for the runway. “The point that it’s so f-ed up is what I love,” he said, smiling.

Di Felice’s five years at the creative helm saw him modernizing the clean, ergonomic lines of Courrèges and purposing its wardrobe for ravers and party-goers while offering everything they needed to get to and from their events. Henry’s voice is completely different; that much we saw with this debut. It’s far too early to rush to judgement, though. Henry only had a matter of weeks to put this show together. It will be interesting to see what he intends to do with it next season.