East West Apparel Shopify Website Design Case Study

East West Apparel curates clothing from independent brands like Heimat, Loop & Weft, Stevenson, and The Strike Gold — all known for their superior fabrics, timeless cuts, and small-batch craftsmanship. They approached me to migrate their site from WooCommerce to Shopify, but the project was about more than a platform move. The goal was to create a store that reflected their anti-design, community-led personality while still following ecommerce best practices to ensure usability and conversions.

Client: East West ApparelServices: UX/UI Design, ShopifyRole: Shopify Design Expert

Grunge-Inspired UI with UX at the Core

The new design embraces an anti-design aesthetic. Textured backgrounds, torn edges, and imperfect visuals, to capture the raw, authentic feel of East West Apparel’s community.

But beneath the grit, I carefully applied UX best practices. The result is a store that feels memorable and characterful, without compromising clarity or conversions.

East West Apparel bespoke hand drawn UI Iocns

Bespoke Hand-Drawn Icons

To further push the handcrafted, independent feel of the brand, I created a set of bespoke hand-drawn icons. These playful details reinforced the grunge aesthetic, added personality, and tied the whole design system together.

Product Cards that reduce this frustration

On the old WooCommerce site, customers often clicked into products only to find their size was out of stock. To reduce this frustration, I designed product cards that display available sizes upfront.

Combined with rough-edged product image borders, this approach kept the authentic, imperfect aesthetic while ensuring the shopping experience was smooth, transparent, and customer-first.

Structured and Modular Product Pages

Product pages were designed in a boxed, modular layout. This made the complex product details easy to digest while reinforcing the site’s unique, structured-yet-grunge visual identity.

Despite the “imperfect” aesthetic, the modular system kept the journey calm, guiding users through images, fabric details, sizing, and add-to-cart without friction.

Grunge Style, Modular by Design

The mobile experience carries the same rough-edged, textured aesthetic as the desktop. But beneath the surface, it’s built on a modular system. Every block can be swapped, stacked, or reconfigured while still lining up, giving East West Apparel the freedom to keep the look raw and expressive without breaking usability.

Desktop UI: Raw, Bold, Immersive

On desktop, the grunge aesthetic takes centre stage. Full-bleed layouts, layered textures, and oversized imagery create a raw, immersive experience that feels unmistakably East West. The modular system keeps everything aligned beneath the chaos, ensuring impact without sacrificing clarity.