Some people talk about where they came from. Simone Davis lives it. The founder and CEO of Sim Allure Boutique did not arrive at New York Fashion Week through connections, industry contacts, or a fashion school pedigree. She arrived through something far harder to teach: the kind of persistence that only comes from having absolutely nothing and choosing to build anyway.
Her crib was a cardboard box. Her runway is New York City. And everything in between is a story worth telling.
From Sav-la-Mar to the Runway
Simone grew up in Savanna-la-Mar, a coastal town on the western tip of Jamaica. It is the kind of place that produces survivors. She describes herself simply as a country girl, but the journey she is describing is anything but simple. Simone grew up in conditions of deep poverty, so severe that a cardboard box served as her earliest shelter.
She does not say this for sympathy, rather she says it as proof.
“I came straight from a box all the way to the runway,” she told Madison Ave Magazine during an exclusive interview at the Runway7 Fashion New York Fashion Week showcase. “And I have proof of it too.”
That proof is Sim Allure Boutique, her fashion label, and the couture collection she brought to that Sony Hall stage on September 11. For those keeping score, that is approximately 4,500 miles from Savanna-la-Mar to Manhattan. Every single one of them earned.
Jabbar Walker / Runway7Fashion
Diamonds, Wings, and What She Believes About Women
Ask Simone about her brand and she does not lead with fabric, silhouettes, or price points. She leads with philosophy.
“My collection is centered around diamonds and wings,” she said, “because I believe every female is a butterfly and they are a perfect gem.”
That is not a marketing line. It is a belief system that runs through every piece she designs. The butterfly represents transformation, the quiet and often painful process of becoming something beyond what your circumstances suggested was possible. The diamond represents the pressure required to get there. Simone knows both intimately.
Sim Allure Boutique is, at its core, a love letter to women who have been underestimated. Women who were handed very little and made something extraordinary from it. Women like Simone has always been.
“Fashion is my first love.”
The Race Is Not for the Swift
Jamaica is a nation that takes track and field seriously. It produces world-class sprinters the way other countries produce accountants. When asked whether that culture of athletic pursuit finds its way into how she approaches fashion, Simone did not hesitate.
“One of my mottos is that the race is not for the swift, it is for who can endure it,” she said. “Because I am telling you, the whole fashion industry is not for the weak.”
She leaned into the metaphor with the conviction of someone who has lived it. Fashion, she explained, is not a sprint. It is not a field you run onto expecting to win on your first lap. It demands something different from you entirely.
“If it is something that you want to just run and win, it does not work like that,” she said. “You have to know that sometimes you are going to have your ups and downs. But the good thing about it is you just keep your focus on your own ball. And trust me, you will get there.”
Keep your focus on your own ball. In an industry that can feel like a constant comparison contest, where the temptation to measure your progress against someone else’s highlight reel is everywhere, that advice cuts straight to the truth.
Jabbar Walker / Runway7Fashion
Runway7 and the Stage She Earned
We first spoke to Simone after Sim Allure Boutique took the Runway7 stage at Sony Hall during the fall 2025 New York Fashion Week season. This stage has built its reputation on exactly this kind of story: designers from every corner of the world, many without traditional industry access, given a real opportunity and a real audience.
For Simone, that stage represented something deeply personal. It was not simply a business milestone. It was the physical, visible distance between a cardboard box in Savanna-la-Mar and a couture collection in New York City, measured in years of work and compressed into a single evening.
The September 11 show at 9pm sharp, as she put it, was not just a showcase. It was a statement.
What Runway7 Means to Designers
New York Fashion Week is one of the most competitive arenas in the world, and Runway7 has built something rare within it: a platform that operates on its own terms. Founded on the belief that talent does not have a zip code, a pedigree, or a publicist, this production has carved out a legitimate and respected space in the heart of Manhattan for designers who are ready to show the world what they have been building.
The ethos is straightforward. Give great designers a great stage and get out of the way. Sony Hall, the runway, the lights, the audience, the photographers on both sides. Everything a collection needs to be seen properly, by people who came specifically to be moved by something.
For a designer like Simone, that environment matters enormously. The fashion industry rewards visibility, and they deliver it without asking designers to compromise their vision to fit someone else’s idea of what sells. A NYFW credit travels. It opens conversations, builds credibility, and puts a collection in front of the kind of audience that shares what they see. For a brand built on a philosophy as distinct as diamonds and wings, that reach is everything.
What the platform ultimately offers is runway time on your own terms, in a city that sets the standard for what fashion can be. Simone has made the most of every second of it. The work speaks, the audience listens, and the stage keeps calling her back.
Jabbar Walker / Runway7Fashion
February 2026: She Came Back, Driven
That September statement was not a one-time moment. When Madison Ave Magazine caught up with Simone at the February 2026 New York Fashion Week showcase, the drive was exactly where it has always been. Sharp. Focused. Unshaken.
The looks told the story before she said a word. Crystal-encrusted corsets draped in sage green tulle coats that swept the runway floor. Diamond-covered mini dresses paired with dramatic mirror-paneled wings that caught the Sony Hall lights from every angle. A fully crystal-embellished black bodysuit topped with a jeweled skull mask and razor-edged black feather wings that stopped the room cold. Blush pink crystal-studded corsets with sheer floor-length skirts. A lavender feather mini with crystal knee-high boots that brought pure joy down the runway. And a white ruffled tulle statement piece that floated behind its model like a cloud with attitude.
Every look was a gem. Every model was a butterfly. The philosophy Simone laid out in her own words was not a tagline. It was a design brief, and the 2026 collection proved she had been executing it at the highest level.
Jabbar Walker / Runway7Fashion
The class, undefeated. The execution, second to none. Simone arrived like someone who already knows. Furthermore, the sold-out Sony Hall crowd responded accordingly. Phones went up on both sides of the runway and stayed there.
That is what a vision looks like when it has had time to breathe. The September collection planted the flag. The February collection expanded the territory. The point of view was sharper, the execution more assured, and the range across the collection made it clear that Simone was no longer introducing herself. She was building a world.
Simone has always known who she is designing for. You can see it in every choice: the crystal work that catches the light without asking permission, the silhouettes that make the body a celebration, the breadth of looks that says no woman gets left out of this. That intentionality does not happen by accident. It happens when the person making the clothes has lived something real.
The journey from one season to the next had clearly not slowed her down. If anything, it had sharpened her. Sim Allure Boutique was no longer just a name to watch. It was becoming a body of work worth watching.
Jabbar Walker / Runway7Fashion
What She Wants You to Know
When asked what advice she would offer to anyone watching from the outside, dreaming of building something of their own, Simone gave the kind of answer that does not need embellishment.
“Just keep focused,” she said. “Because at the end of the day, if God put it in your mind and your heart, you will succeed. He does not give us fake dreams.”
He does not give us fake dreams. Four words that carry the full weight of a life built from nothing into something remarkable. Coming from someone whose earliest bed was a box, those words do not sound like a motivational poster. They sound like testimony.
Simone is not finished. Sim Allure Boutique is not finished. The collection centered around diamonds and wings is finding its audience, one woman at a time, each one a butterfly in the process of becoming.
And somewhere in Savanna-la-Mar, a country girl from Jamaica is proof that the runway was always waiting for her. She just had to get there first.
Follow Sim Allure Boutique on Instagram: @simallureboutique
Follow Simone on Instagram: @allure__mililani_
Learn more about Runway7 Fashion at runway7fashion.com
