The fitting room at ZUZWA's Paris atelier smells faintly of steam and sizing

The fitting room at ZUZWA's Paris atelier smells faintly of steam and sizing. Maxime Hubert stands with his arms crossed, watching a model turn in a coat that doesn't yet sit right. The shoulder wants to slide forward. He steps in, pins the blade, steps back. Turns her again. Better. Not there, but better.

Hubert is thirty-four. He has been creative director at ZUZWA since 2019, though the appointment felt less like a coronation than a quiet handover. The house, founded in 2011 by Polish-born designer Zofia Zuzwa, had built a reputation for austere tailoring and a palette that rarely strayed past charcoal, navy, and bone. When Zuzwa stepped back to focus on textile development, Hubert inherited not just a brand but a vocabulary—one he has since expanded without abandoning.

Formation

Hubert did not train at Central Saint Martins or the Royal Academy. He studied literature at the Sorbonne, dropped out after two years, and took a job at a small costume atelier in the Marais. The work was technical: altering period pieces for theatre, rebuilding jackets from the 1940s, learning how a garment holds its shape when the body inside it moves. He spent three years there, mostly unpaid, before a friend suggested he apply to Studio Berçot.

At Berçot he learned draping and patternmaking in the old manner—toile first, adjustments by hand, no shortcuts. His graduate collection in 2014 featured five coats, all unlined, all cut from deadstock wool he had sourced from a mill outside Lyon. The collection was not groundbreaking. It was, however, precise. Zofia Zuzwa saw it at a group exhibition in the 11th arrondissement and offered him an internship the following week.

The internship became an assistantship. The assistantship became a co-design role. By 2017, Hubert was handling most of the atelier direction while Zuzwa focused on fabric partnerships and the brand's slow expansion into knitwear. When she formally stepped aside two years later, the transition was so gradual that some clients didn't notice.

Virage

Hubert's first solo collection for ZUZWA, shown in February 2020, did not reinvent the house. It sharpened it. The silhouettes remained lean and structured, but he introduced a wider shoulder and a longer skirt on the coats—proportions borrowed from 1980s Armani but rendered in lighter-weight cloth. He swapped the house's signature charcoal for a softer anthracite and added a single accent colour: a deep rust that appeared on linings, pocket welts, and the occasional trouser stripe.

The collection sold well, particularly in Japan and South Korea, where ZUZWA had quietly built a following. But it was the Spring/Summer 2021 showing—his second—that marked a clearer departure. Hubert kept the tailoring but introduced unstructured linen separates, wide-leg trousers in raw silk, and a series of overshirts cut like lab coats. The palette expanded: sand, olive, a washed-out coral. The clothes looked less like armour and more like something you might wear on a Sunday.

He has said, in interviews, that he wanted to make ZUZWA feel less monastic. The house had always appealed to a specific customer—someone who valued construction over decoration, who preferred a single perfect jacket to a wardrobe of options. Hubert did not want to lose that customer, but he also did not want to limit the house to her.

Signature

What defines a Hubert-era ZUZWA piece is not a single cut or detail but a kind of restraint. The tailoring is still rigorous—double-welt pockets, hand-padded lapels, canvas interlining where it matters—but the garments themselves feel less severe. He favours softer fabrics: unfinished linens, loosely woven cottons, wools with a slight slub. The construction remains formal, but the cloth is allowed to move.

His jackets, in particular, have developed a following. They are cut with a high armhole and a narrow waist, but the shoulder is natural—no padding, just a clean line that follows the body. The effect is tailored without being stiff, structured without being rigid. It is the kind of jacket that works over a T-shirt or a dress shirt, that can be worn to a meeting or a dinner without feeling out of place in either.

He has also introduced a small accessories line: belts in vegetable-tanned leather, simple canvas totes, a single style of derby shoe made in collaboration with a Portuguese manufacturer. The accessories feel like extensions of the clothing—functional, well-made, free of logos or obvious branding. ZUZWA does not do monograms.

The house remains small. Hubert works with a team of six in the Paris atelier and produces two collections a year, plus a small capsule of knitwear each autumn. There are no flagship stores, no celebrity collaborations, no plans for a diffusion line. ZUZWA sells through a handful of independent retailers—Hostem in London, The Apartment in New York, several boutiques in Tokyo—and directly via its own site. Hubert has resisted pressure to scale up, though he admits the economics are precarious.

What Comes Next

In his studio—a converted warehouse space in the 19th arrondissement—Hubert keeps a rack of samples from past collections. He pulls a jacket from Spring/Summer 2022, turns it inside out to show the seam allowances. They are wider than necessary, finished by hand, almost invisible from the outside. It is the kind of detail that most customers will never notice, and he knows this. But it matters to him.

He is working now on a collaboration with a Swiss textile mill, developing a series of fabrics from recycled wool and linen. The project has taken two years and will likely add cost to an already expensive product. He does not seem concerned. ZUZWA, he says, is not trying to compete with the big houses. It is trying to do one thing well.

His Autumn/Winter 2025 collection, shown last month, included his first foray into outerwear beyond the house's signature coats. There were quilted vests in waxed cotton, a hooded anorak in Japanese ripstop, a parka with a detachable lining. The pieces felt practical, almost utilitarian, but the details—contrast topstitching, hidden pockets, adjustable cuffs—revealed the same attention that defines the tailoring.

Hubert does not talk much about legacy or vision. He talks about cloth, about fit, about the small adjustments that make a garment work. In the fitting room, the coat now sits where it should. The model turns, and the shoulder stays in place. Hubert nods, makes a note, moves on to the next piece. There are six more fittings today, and the collection shows in three weeks.

ZUZWA will not be the biggest name at Paris Fashion Week. It will not have the largest audience or the most elaborate set. But for a certain kind of customer—someone who values construction, who understands the difference between a fused and a floating canvas, who wants clothes that last—it will be exactly what they came for.