Peau de Chagrin

Beautiful, minimal website for luxury accessories brand, Peau de Chagrin including individually designed product pages, galleries (photos and video), shopping options and a journal to feature news and recent press release information.

The Client

Mesh Chhibber and Sofie C. Guerrero launched Maison Peau de Chagrin in 2015, influenced by Honor de Balzac’s novel bearing the same name.

Inspired by master craftsmen and their use of traditional techniques, Sofie and Mesh travel across Europe to seek out artisans to create timeless, limited edition pieces. Rather than focus on fast fashion, Peau de Chagrin takes the opposite approach. Under Sofie’s creative vision, the emphasis is put on the enduring quality of objects, made by craftsmen and intended to last generations.

The Brief

Although the client already had a fairly simple pre-launch website, this needed to be extended to showcase their more recent products as well as adding more detailed information about their range, their production methods and the ethos of the company itself.

Given their emphasis on high quality and outstanding design, it wasn’t surprising that the client was keen that their website should also reflect the same aesthetic values whilst also ensuring that it was quick to load and easy to use.

Whilst most of the websites I design are based around the WordPress platform, in this case the client specifically requested that SquareSpace should be used as the platform with which they were already more familiar.  With SquareSpace being slightly less flexible when it comes to customisation (especially as detailed as was required in this case), this did present a few challenges but none that were insurmountable and actually left me with a new-found respect for an option which (I have to admit) I’d previously tended to overlook.

The Design

As an artist and inspiration behind the Peau de Chagrin range, Sofie had a clear vision of how the website should look and it was a pleasure to collaborate with her in order to make that a reality online.

Together we came up with a beautiful, minimal design which puts the emphasis on the design and quality of their range and allows the images to speak for themselves.  Unlike many websites, each page was individually designed (almost hand-crafted in itself) to suit the product being featured, whilst also taking care to maintain the overall luxurious yet minimal look of the Peau de Chagrin brand.

See the result here – Peau de Chagrin

Feeling inspired with ideas for your business? Why not contact me and let’s chat.

 

We are delighted to be working with Cassie on our online shop Peau de Chagrin.

She is versatile, precise and concise. Working remotely, her feed back or responses are quick and have helped to guide us in making the right choices along the way. She is resourceful and will always find ways to accommodate design expectations and explain the technical problems she foresees in order to find solutions that won’t impair aesthetics, an aspect which is very important to us.

Sofie C Guerrero
Creative director and co-founder of Peau de Chagrin