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Au Départ delivering Parisian Luxury

Services Provided

Brand Strategy, Website Design, Image Creation

Role

Lead Designer

Project type

Shopify Design & Development

Industry

Fashion

Website

Au Départ

Date

Designed during my time at Charle Agency (2023)

Au Départ was founded way back in 1834. The brand reached great success in the 1920s when it was considered one of the four greatest French trunk-makers alongside Louis Vuitton, Goyard and Moynat. Some decades later, Au Départ, already merged with competitor Moynat, entered a ‘sleeping mode‘ in 1976. Now the brand is back again with a fresh take on bespoke trunks, bags, accessories and high-tech for cosmopolitan nomads. To bring this fresh vision to life, Au Départ chose Charle to design and develop a bespoke Shopify build, migrating over from other ecommerce platforms Commercelayer and WordPress. With search and collection merchandising, advanced filtering and logic, app integrations, technical optimizations, and a web design overhaul, we launched Au Départ’s new website to focus on maximizing conversions and the user experience, unlocking its full potential.

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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