The after-dark sensualité at Azzaro’s Spring couture show gave way to something brighter at Maxime Simoëns’s Fall outing for the house. Inspired by a trip to the tropics, Simoëns infused the collection with an exotic spirit, all palm fronds and shimmering jungle green fringes. Where this worked best was in a series of ombré Lurex-plissé gowns that faded from pastel pink to ice blue or lilac to orange. Compared to the sunset-hued soigné of these pieces, the literal leaf prints felt a bit obvious.
Simoëns made up for that with some couture ideas that, while not the stars of the show, were quite strong. One, a relaxed white suit with crystal buttons on the trousers à la tearaway pants, was a smart blend of masculine/feminine–meets–athleisure. Another was a simple white double-breasted dress with beading across the torso that gradated from gold to silver, matte to shimmering, with an Azzaro A tailored into the back seam.
A strass-laden blazer in a mélange of pastels, worn with an undone silk blouse and denim-blue snakeskin pants, was far from tropical, but it looked like what you might see girls wandering around the Marais wear on any given Saturday—same silhouette, same palette, but decidedly chicer materials. That kind of swift elevation of the everyday is Simoëns’s strength, having explored menswear with a splash of street in the break between designing his eponymous label and his arrival at Azzaro. A year and a half into his tenure at the house, he is wise to imbue a little more Maxime into each collection.
