Art Direction · UI/UX · Design System · E-commerce · iOS App
Helen Marlen — luxury that finally flows online.
Helen Marlen perfected luxury offline — showrooms, personal stylists, try-on at home — but online felt cold and transactional. Across two chapters, years apart, I helped move that experience onto the screen: first an ambitious editorial-commerce vision built to carry the boutique's atmosphere and win over a new generation; then, when reality forced a scale-down, a pragmatic return that brought order to a chaotic system and made buying effortless — a 3-tap phone-code login in place of a 3-step form, one-click buy, guest checkout, and ~14 rebuilt account screens across web and a native iOS app.
Context & Challenge
A 30-year offline ritual that online couldn't carry.
Helen Marlen is Ukraine's premier luxury retailer — 300+ elite labels across Woman, Man and Kids. Offline it's showrooms, personal stylists and "try-on at home"; online it was cold grids with none of that atmosphere. The brand's brief was explicit: the digital experience should feel like the salon — not only the concierge service, but the visual language itself. And it had to answer three different audiences at once — the loyal client who fears losing her personal treatment, the new affluent shopper who fears buying a fake, and the young aspiring shopper who fears overspending — all sharing one underlying anxiety: "what if it doesn't fit."
Process
Every decision earned — discovery before design.
Working with the in-house UX team, we ran discovery before any interface: data gathering, client interviews, competitor research and a customer survey; from those findings we built the personas, framed the core hypothesis, moved through wireframing and sign-off, and only then into UI.
Persona
Three shoppers, three fears — one interface.
Losing the salon's personal treatment online, and whether a piece will fit.
Cold generic grids; no one who knows her taste; the hassle of returns.
Her personal manager continues online, fit is de-risked (measurements, try-on), and the interface feels like the boutique.
Authenticity ("are these original?") and, still, fit.
Can't inspect before paying; fear of fakes and unfamiliar online stores.
The retailer proves it's official, information and delivery are transparent, and returns are easy.
Spending big on one piece when the same money buys ten. "Fashionable — but not for all the money in the world."
Luxury feels gated; the fast-fashion treadmill; no affordable way in.
He sees cost-per-wear, the brand grows his taste, and he can earn his way to a first real piece.
Brand mission — cultivate taste in Ukrainian shoppers and counter mindless, tasteless consumerism, while making life easier for loyal clients and drawing in new affluent ones. Buy less, buy well.
Research & the core insight
Different fears, one job: turn anxiety into confidence.
With the in-house UX team, we ran the discovery — a customer survey, interviews with willing clients and competitor analysis — and I took an active part in it. Publicly the same fears repeat — 52% of shoppers hesitate when unsure of fit, 64% return over sizing, and authenticity and lost personal service are the top luxury-online blockers. My job was to translate each fear into UI.
Concierge stylist delivery + try-on at home; an account that remembers her; an editorial visual language that echoes the boutique.
Live todayOfficial-retailer proof (heritage, 190+ brands, single online/offline pricing, seller transparency) + measurements & size guide + Click&Collect try-and-pay + free 14-day returns.
Live todayAn editorial feed that builds taste and gamified rewards toward a first affordable piece. Live covers this only via loyalty points, Trade-In and Outlet.
Planned — Ch.1Chapter 1 — The Vision
An editorial feed that learns your taste as you scroll — not through forms.
The visual language (salon, on screen)
To deliver "the salon, digitally," the store was rebuilt in the brand's own register: editorial serif display against a restrained grotesk UI, generous whitespace, full-bleed campaign photography and brand-story pages — the boutique's calm, curated atmosphere translated into an interface, not a catalogue.
The UX moves
The store was reframed as an infinite, social-media-like fashion feed. Fit anxiety was answered without nagging: preference capture was gamified — skippable at sign-up, then surfaced as playful in-feed prompts ("love this? what size? which colour?") that quietly build a sizing and taste profile; complete it and the feed personalizes. A concierge option — free Kyiv try-on delivery — carried the showroom ritual online. Because the system was large, I built a component library with variables and tokens (before "design tokens" was common) across three breakpoints (320 / 768 / 1280) — the base the iOS app later grew from.
Role note — As Art Director at Vintage, I led the UI, the editorial visual language and this design system, and was an active part of the team-led UX discovery.
Reality — the scale-down
The vision outran what the brand could build.
The feed-and-gamification concept was heavier to engineer than the client could resource. It was paused, and the store shipped as a pared-back, conventional MVP — the feed and game layers removed, and with them the dedicated push for the young-shopper persona, because reaching that audience needed sustained communication that wasn't realistic yet. This case shows the full vision alongside what actually shipped.
Chapter 2 — The Return
Years later they came back — to a mess. I rebuilt the order.
The client returned to fix registration and checkout. The Figma files had drifted into chaos, so before redesigning anything I gathered every screen and rebuilt the design system from scratch — one clean, tokenized source. Then I made the flows effortless: a 3-tap phone-code login and one-tap social in place of a 3-step, ~7-field form; a guest checkout that needs no account; one unified checkout page (delivery → payment); one-click buy on the product card that skips the cart; and delivery choices in-checkout — stylist concierge, showroom try-on, Nova Poshta or standard.
The App
A broken app, rebuilt into a system — screen by screen.
I inherited an inconsistent iOS app with no system. I audited it, rebuilt it into a tokenized design system and components, then designed the missing flows and states: auth reworked to phone number + confirmation code (with resend and input-error states), ~14 account screens and states (home, personal data, orders, wishlist, address book with empty state, change-phone confirmation, callback, contact, live-highlight search), and a PDP aligned to web — size guide, "complete the look," similar items, the preference quiz and a sticky buy bar.
Selected screens & system
One editorial system — web and iOS speaking the same language.
Editorial serif meets a restrained grotesk UI, a quiet palette, and a tokenized component library shared across platforms — the layer that keeps web and app consistent and lets the team extend the product without breaking it.
Impact
No vanity metrics — measurable craft.
Effortless entry
A 3-step, ~7-field form collapsed to a 3-tap phone-code login, one-tap social, or guest checkout.
LiveOne system, two platforms
A single tokenized design system unifying web and native iOS, replacing drifting files.
LiveRebuilt at depth
~14 account screens and states in the app; three responsive breakpoints on web.
LiveThe differentiator, surfaced
Concierge try-on pulled to the front of checkout; aimed at higher AOV and fewer size returns (directional; not measured).
LiveFor loyal and affluent clients these fears are closed on the live store today — concierge, try-on, authenticity, returns. The young-shopper vision (the editorial feed and gamified taste-building) is the planned next chapter; the live store runs lean as an MVP.
What shipped
Next chapter
An MVP is a starting point, not the finish line.
Instrument the checkout
Usability-test the phone-code and guest paths to find remaining friction.
Measure the fit tools
Track whether richer size guidance lowers size-driven returns.
Scale the system
Extend the shared component library as new features ship.
Revisit the young-shopper feed
When the brand can resource the sustained communication it needs.