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Au Départ – Heritage Trunk-Maker Relaunch on Shopify

Role

Lead Designer

Services Provided

Brand Strategy, Website Design, Image Creation

Project type

Shopify Design & Development

Industry

Fashion

Date

Designed during my time at Charle Agency (2023)

Website

Au Départ

Goal: Relaunch Au Depart, one of the four original great French trunk-makers, dormant since 1976, with a bespoke Shopify build matching its heritage and its new positioning for cosmopolitan travellers. Role: Lead UX/UI Designer. Approach: Migrated the brand from Commercelayer and WordPress onto a bespoke Shopify build. Implemented search and collection merchandising, advanced filtering and logic, and supporting app integrations alongside a full web design overhaul. Outcome: Launched a new Au Depart website built to maximise conversion and user experience, giving a 190-year-old heritage brand a digital presence to match its history.

As the lead designer on the Au Départ project, I ensured that the visual direction was both striking and perfectly aligned with the brand’s high-fashion identity. Given the prestige of the label, it was essential to create a digital experience that reflected its legacy and luxury appeal. To achieve this, I led a comprehensive discovery phase, analysing the brand’s guidelines, assessing key competitors, and reviewing its existing online presence. This foundational work allowed me to craft a design that authentically represented Au Départ’s image, aligned with its goals, and brought its mission to life through a distinctive and elegant user experience.

As the lead designer on the Au Départ project, I focused on creating a sleek, refined aesthetic that reflected the brand’s luxury status while ensuring effortless usability. I designed the collection and shop look pages to present products beautifully and intuitively, making it easy for customers to browse and find exactly what they’re looking for. To bring this vision to life, I collaborated closely with our in-house Shopify development team, ensuring the design translated seamlessly into a high-performance build. We prioritised fast load times and a smooth user experience to support key performance metrics like conversion rate and bounce rate. I also integrated advanced filtering and logic into the design, allowing customers to see the correct product variants—such as colour—instantly when applying filters, which played a key role in improving user engagement and driving results.

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