If there's one thing you should understand about fashion, it's the fact that branding and 'lifestyle' play a huge part in the success or failure of a label. Many companies have been launched into stardom just by turning their apparel line into an experience. For those creating menswear, branding becomes even important; mens apparel tends to be less showy and more practical than the loud colors and silhouettes of RTW womenswear. Branding and storytelling can create the hype that sells garments that are otherwise pretty minimal.

When Maurice Chevalier came to DesignGood for help, he was just beginning his brand. The pitch was essentially elevated basics for men. His main goal was to take your basic tee or button-down and make a version that was luxurious. The highest of quality materials, Italian fabrication, etc. The problem with elevated basics, however, is that they don't always show their quality through a webstore. As Maurice's designer, I had my job cut out for me.

I designed a handful of brand options for the client, with my main focus being to create visual identities that could keep up with luxury giants. Generally luxury brands have strong yet minimal branding, with logos that speak to the heritage of their respective companies. I was aiming for brands like Chanel, Dior, Gucci, and Tom Ford which have very strong wordmark logos. The client selected an identity option that felt modern and metropolitan, with a nice mix of serif and sans serif fonts as well as a relatively neutral color palette.

When it came to designing the Chevalier website we were somewhat limited in ability. Similar to my other apparel client Lounge by H, we were limited to the use of Shopify for the client's e-store. I picked Shopify's Spark Theme to start with because of its focus on large, expansive photography. The theme also felt very similar to a few designer brand sites I had seen around town (ahem, Valentino). I was very fortunate that the client supplied us with new brand photography, full of both aesthetic shots as well as product shots. With the combination of a classy theme and good photography the site nearly designed itself.