Poésie by Julie — slow-fashion store case study

A made-to-order store for a British slow-fashion atelier

Poésie by Julie is a British slow-fashion label and bridal atelier making every piece to order. We built a store where capsule collections, custom measurements at checkout, local-currency pricing and a separate bespoke bridal route live side by side.

Poésie by Julie homepage with the capsule collections opener and entry into the shop

01Challenge

Poésie by Julie is a British slow-fashion label and bridal atelier. Julie designs and sews every garment herself, to the client's own measurements, in natural, responsibly sourced fabrics. The name is pronounced 'po-é-zi' — French for poetry — and it sets the tone for everything the brand does.

A store like this cannot behave like a stock catalogue. Nothing sits in a warehouse: the customer picks a style, a fabric and a length, submits measurements, and only then does the making begin. The storefront had to explain that before payment, not in an email afterwards.

On top of that, two audiences share one site. Some buyers want a dress from the current capsule in a couple of clicks. Brides want a conversation, a fitting and a quote. And orders ship across Europe, the US, Japan, Australia and the Middle East, so every visitor needs to see the price in money they actually think in.

02Solution

We built the structure around two journeys: a fast route through curated edits, and a slower route into bespoke.

The catalogue is split into meaningful entry points rather than one long grid: Shop All, Dresses, Ready to Ship, The Occasionwear Edit ('designed for moments to remember'), The Modern Classics ('effortless for everyday'), Bestsellers and Gift Card. Bridal sits apart and leads to the bespoke service, not to the cart.

The homepage moves in sequence: the capsule collections opener, an as-featured-in press strip, two large gateways into Bridal and Sustainability, three brand principles (designed to last, caring for the planet, personal service), a bestsellers carousel with prices, the atelier's own statement, a wall of customer reviews and an FAQ accordion.

What we built

A custom Shopify theme, hand-coded section by section, with no off-the-shelf template and no app clutter
Measurements and customisation requests passed into the order through the checkout note field, exactly as the FAQ promises
Multi-currency, multi-region setup: country switcher, local pricing, and the free shipping thresholds (£350 UK, £500 worldwide) surfaced in the announcement bar
An FAQ block on the homepage that answers the real objections before the cart: 2–3 week turnaround, what can be customised, how to send measurements, how to care for the garment
Carbon-neutral shipping widget and a Sustainability section treated as positioning, not decoration
Instagram feed, newsletter signup, predictive search and customer accounts

Type and layout are built on space and large imagery — the fabric matters more than the interface. Images are served responsively with lazy loading, critical CSS is inlined, fonts are preloaded. SEO is handled in the markup: considered titles and descriptions, product and breadcrumb structured data, a clean heading hierarchy, sitemap and hreflang for international results.