Building a digital-only brand under pressure:
Launching Phoebe Philo
In 2023, I led design for Phoebe Philo's LVMH-backed, digital-only fashion brand: a zero-to-one e-commerce platform under a non-negotiable deadline. Within 8 months, my team delivered a platform that handled half a million visitors on the first day, and completely sold out in 48 hours.
Role
Senior Product Designer (Design Lead)
Team
Managed a Product Designer
Year
2023→24
All images courtesy of
phoebephilo.com
The stakes
Phoebe Philo's LVMH-backed, digital-only brand had been anticipated since its 2021 announcement. By 2023, the launch was a year behind schedule. We had until October to deliver a complete e-commerce platform to an audience that had been waiting, and building expectations, for over two years.
The challenge wasn't just delivering on time. It was managing unprecedented demand while honouring a designer's uncompromising vision for quiet luxury in a medium designed for friction and conversion.
The constraints
No traditional retail meant no physical touchpoints. Every interaction would happen through a screen. The brand's minimalist aesthetic couldn't compromise usability. And with LVMH's backing came LVMH-level scrutiny.
I translated Work & Co's initial designs into a functional product across three platforms: direct-to-consumer (DTC), private client services (PC), and an internal Digital ID platform, while building a design system to make it scalable.
I managed an associate designer and partnered with offshore development in Italy, navigating Creative and Communications oversight to keep everything aligned.
The challenge
The business wanted to avoid sell-out chaos and minimise returns. Brand wanted to protect Phoebe's vision. But the actual user problem was simpler: how do you invest in pieces you can't see or touch, from a brand with no track record, under intense time pressure? I reframed the work around three questions.
Business
How do we handle high demand without operational collapse?
User Experience
How do we minimise friction without losing the sense of luxury?
Brand
How do we translate an artistic vision into functional interfaces?
Design principles
When priorities clashed, a few principles helped cut through the noise:
Speed over sophistication in high-pressure moments. When users are competing for limited inventory, clarity and speed matter.
Transparency over ambiguity. New brand, no retail presence, high prices. Users needed confidence through clarity.
Consistency as a foundation for scale. Every pattern we established would need to work across future drops, private client tools, and international expansion.
User prioritisation
For the DTC site, I defined two main user groups:
Buyers: high-intent customers ready to invest, primarily women 30-50 who had been waiting years for this launch.
Browsers: fashion enthusiasts exploring without immediate purchase intent.
Given the October deadline and operational constraints, I prioritised the buyer journey. Every feature decision served conversion: account creation, checkout speed, stock visibility. The experience needed to be fast, transparent, and unambiguous.
This meant trade-offs:
Checkout speed over browsing features
Directness over subtlety when inventory is scarce
These weren't aesthetic choices, but risk mitigation.
Building alignment across functions
With new team members, offshore development, and creative oversight, alignment couldn't be passive. I established daily stand-ups with the digital team, regular feasibility reviews with development, and proactive alignment sessions with department heads.
Figma became the source of truth. Not just for design, but also for conversations about feasibility, brand adherence, and business constraints. When tensions surfaced between brand and usability, I used the prototype as the common ground.
The research approach
The brand's secrecy made external research impossible. No user interviews. No beta testing with real customers. Instead, I worked with what was available:
Private client managers became user proxies, sharing customer expectations and anxieties from years of direct relationships
Competitor analysis across luxury positioning (The Row, Bottega Veneta) and streetwear drops (Supreme, Palace) to understand high-demand mechanics
Internal usability sessions to pressure-test flows before launch
It wasn't ideal, but it was enough to make informed bets.
Pre-launch risk mitigation
Anticipated Risk
Design Decision
Expected Outcome
Checkout bottleneck during high demand
Pre-registration with saved delivery details
Faster conversion during drops
Users missing the launch window
Automated CRM touchpoints
Higher day-one participation and reduced frustration
Stock ambiguity during high-demand drops
Real-time inventory visibility with visual sold-out indicators
Reduced browse-to-cart friction and fewer abandoned sessions
Fit uncertainty without physical touchpoints
Detailed measurements and size conversions
Reduced fit-related support inquiries
Opening the size guide on PDP
The results
First 48 hours after launch
,000
unique visitors
%
sellout across all products
%
of buyers were pre-registered
Operational validation
Pre-registration shifted friction away from the high-pressure purchase moment. 92% of users navigated directly to shop, confirming the decision to keep the homepage focused and the path to product short.
Customer service inquiries centred on order status and payment confirmation. Sizing questions were notably absent, suggesting the detailed measurements reduced fit anxiety before it became a support issue.
Lessons from launch
The post-launch retro with twelve teammates surfaced operational issues I hadn't anticipated—edge cases in inventory sync, form data retention problems, email notification timing. Creating space for honesty—especially when the launch was deemed a success—improved how the team worked together in the months that followed.
If I could go back, I'd push harder for lightweight user testing earlier—even within constraints. Internal testing gave us confidence, but real customers surfaced friction points we only discovered post-launch.
The longer view
The launch proved the model worked, but also revealed what needed to evolve: smarter inventory forecasting, better tooling to capture unmet demand, and more sophisticated personalisation for return customers. That work became the foundation for the next phase—including the Notify Me feature that emerged directly from post-launch customer feedback.
ayşe is pronounced aishé.
she/her.
