Role
E-Commerce UX Designer | Editorial Layout Designer | Trend Report Creator
Year
2019
Applications
Adobe XD, PS, Google Analytic, Excel
Brief
W Concept’s positioning as a Korean-rooted platform in the U.S. called for culturally nuanced merchandising. I designed modular editorial layouts that softened the cultural gap—translating micro-trends and styling habits into visual stories Western audiences could adopt.
Overview: Curating K-Fashion for the U.S.
W Concept USA is a multi-brand fashion platform featuring Korean contemporary labels and emerging designers. With a mission to expand into the United States, the brand needed cultural localization and merchandising strategies that would resonate with U.S. consumers. I joined the team during a period of rapid campaign turnover to enhance product storytelling, optimize conversion flows, and ultimately drive performance metrics.
Challenge: Translating Trend-Driven Fashion Across Cultures
W Concept’s expansion into the U.S. presented a unique challenge: Korean fashion trends often move at a rapid pace, layered with micro-styling cues and local context that can feel unfamiliar to U.S. audiences. At the same time, Western consumers expect narrative-driven discovery, clear categorization, and localized styling context to engage meaningfully with new brands.
The challenge was to design an experience that bridged this cultural gap—translating the freshness and energy of K-fashion into stories and visual flows that felt intuitive and inspiring to a Western audience, while retaining the credibility and style edge that defined W Concept.
How might we preserve the platform’s trend-driven, Korean-rooted identity while making it accessible and desirable to Western shoppers?
Design Approach: Systems for Storytelling
To translate W Concept’s fast-moving, trend-driven approach into a seamless U.S. shopping experience, I structured the redesign around systems that could scale narrative discovery while preserving visual clarity:
1. Modular Editorial Layouts:
Created reusable, flexible templates that adapt to K-fashion’s rapid trend cycles, allowing W Concept to feature new arrivals and micro-trends without extensive redesign.
Maintained visual and navigational consistency across seasonal campaigns, ensuring intuitive exploration while preserving brand cohesion.
Streamlined design and merchandising workflows, enabling efficient production and faster campaign launches.
Reflection: Designing for Cultural Translation at Scale
Designing for W Concept highlighted how structured systems can support fast-moving trends while preserving brand identity. It reinforced the importance of aligning narrative discovery with commerce flows to engage new markets, and showed how thoughtful design can make global styles approachable for new audiences.
This project also taught me the value of navigating team priorities—balancing marketing’s need for visual richness with engineering’s focus on performance—to advocate for user-centered outcomes while respecting business realities.
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