Thameen London Shopify Website Design Case Study

Thameen London is a niche luxury fragrance house stocked in Harrods and boutiques worldwide, with a range of Extraits de Parfum priced from £200 upwards. They came to me with a headless Shopify setup that had become difficult to manage and update, and wanted to move to Shopify 2.0 to take back control of their content. After a detailed discussion, it was clear that a Shopify migration to a well-chosen premium theme was the right first step - giving them a solid, flexible platform to build on, with a bespoke custom build something to revisit once they had more data and content in place. With the right theme and a sharp design eye, the result looks anything but off-the-shelf.

Client: Thameen LondonServices: UX & UI Design, ShopifyRole: Shopify Design Expert

Shopify theme store theme selection for new Shopify Store

Choosing the Right Premium Shopify Theme

Not all premium Shopify themes are equal, and for a brand like Thameen the stakes are high. I shortlisted two themes that I felt had the right bones from both a content and conversion standpoint – clean layouts, strong typography control, and the flexibility to let the product photography do the talking. After reviewing both with the client, we settled on Sleek, a premium theme that gave us excellent structural foundations and plenty of room to push the design further.

The theme selection process is often underestimated. Getting it right at this stage saves significant time and money further down the line.

Initial Designs in Figma

Before touching the theme, I created initial designs in Figma as a fully clickable prototype. This is a much better way of working than jumping straight into a theme editor – it lets me think across the whole site at once, design the UI without the constraints of a live environment, and give the client a proper feel for how everything will work before a single line of code is written.

For Thameen, this stage was particularly useful in establishing the overall visual language – the spacing, the typography hierarchy, and how the brand’s rich photography would be used across different page types.

Making a Premium Theme Feel Bespoke

A well-designed theme becomes truly distinctive when you identify the right places to push it. For Thameen, the biggest gains came from the header and footer. These are the frames around every single page – get them right and the whole site lifts. The header was refined to sit cleanly against the editorial imagery without competing with it, while the footer was given considered structure and spacing that felt deliberate rather than default.

These are the moments where a designer with a strong eye earns their keep. Small adjustments in the right places create a very different impression from what the theme ships with.

Shopify Product Cards

This is where a theme build can genuinely surprise you. Thameen’s product range is relatively tight – a focused collection of high-end fragrances – which made this the perfect opportunity to design a full-width, clean product grid that put the bottles front and centre. The cards were designed to feel editorial and elevated, with considered use of white space and typography that matched the brand’s positioning.

Crucially, the cards also made use of the theme’s built-in add to bag functionality, so customers can add products directly from the collection page without having to drill into each product detail page. On a luxury site, keeping the journey smooth and unhurried matters.

Thameen London Shopify product cards design by Anthony is Freelance

Full Theme Styling

With the key design decisions locked in, the work became about consistency – taking the visual language established in the early stages and applying it systematically across every page type and interaction. Every section of the theme was styled: product pages, collection pages, the cart, overlays, typography, buttons, and hover states.

This stage also involved mapping out which elements needed custom CSS and working with the developer to make sure those refinements were implemented cleanly. The result is a site where nothing feels out of place – every screen, at every stage of the journey, feels like Thameen.

The Finished Thameen London Shopify Store

The finished site balances the restraint expected of a luxury fragrance brand with a clean, functional shopping experience. The editorial imagery and video content take centre stage throughout, while the UI stays out of the way and lets the products speak. On mobile it holds up just as well – considered layouts and well-chosen type sizes mean the experience doesn’t degrade when you move to a smaller screen.

For Thameen, this is the platform they needed – manageable, content-ready, and a strong foundation to build on as the brand grows. If you’re working with a similar brief, you can find out more about what I do as a Shopify expert.