The rebranding of a women's fashion concept brand established in 1995, aligning its image with casual and modern Scandinavian style.
Brand Development / Research / Concept Design / Fashion Collection Design
My Role
Head Designer,
Customer Research, Competitive & SWOT Analysis, Concept Design, Fashion Design, Iterative Product Development, Protosampling, Collection Presentations.
Credits to my team:
Luisa Laine, Tiina Kanninen, Sari Laaksonen, Suvi Turtiainen, Maggie Xu, Ealina Yao, Nancy Zhang, and Anna Zhang.
Your FACE is a Finnish women’s fashion brand established in 1995. The collections encompass stylish clothing and accessory combinations for everyday life, work, and special occasions – always with a touch of luxury. The design focus is on comfortable materials and a perfect fit. By 2016, the brand was known for its high quality, particularly for its dress collection, which offered styles for a wide range of occasions.
I successfully led the design and development of a refreshed brand image, a new visual direction for imagery and collection book layouts, as well as the design and structure of the fashion collections.
The Challenge
Your FACE was launched in 1995 , and it has been a part of Finnish women's lives for over twenty years, aiming to ensure that busy women who follow trends and value quality find solutions to their dressing needs from one and the same store. Brand mission was to create inspiring clothes and styles for your wardrobe.
The problem with Your FACE was the lack of a brand vision, resulting in mixed messages communicating the brand image. Several years of unstable team structure, especially on the design side, led to poor financial performance and a declining collection size. The brand image was outdated, and the brand wanted to appeal to a younger, more trend-focused consumer segment.
What was really challenging about this project was to keep all old loyal customers, while updating the brand image to appeal more trend focused young segment. Rebranding a clothing brand to appeal to a younger, trend-focused demographic while retaining older, loyal customers presents several challenges. Firstly, the brand needs to strike a delicate balance between modernizing its image to attract the new target group without alienating its existing customer base, who may have different preferences and expectations. Secondly, the messaging, branding elements, and product offerings must resonate with both segments simultaneously, requiring careful consideration and strategic planning. We needed to strike the perfect balance between the preferences, while creating something that feels fresh and modern.Overall, navigating these differences in demographics and preferences while executing a successful rebranding can be complex and challenging for clothing brands.
Research & Discovery
In both Fashion concept and UX design, the process shares numerous similarities. It starts with comprehensive research, including competitive and SWOT analysis, empathizing and defining the root problem, creating empathy maps and personas, brainstorming ideas and creating mood boards to visualize the concept. Subsequently, business objectives are established, and insights and feedback from past projects are reviewed. The process highlights collaborative design work and cross-team meetings and presentations to stakeholders and finally to the sales teams.
Strategy & Business Goals
We were given ambitious business goals for the re-launch from the company leadership. The brand was opening new stores, and they wanted to have the new concept launched for the openings. I created the visual parts for these strategies, and was responsible of the creative direction of the brand.
Here are some steps we considered while forming the strategy:
Market Research: Conduct thorough market research to understand the preferences, lifestyles, and purchasing behaviors of our target, the contemporary & younger demographic. This insight will guide our rebranding efforts.
Define the Brand Identity: Reimagine the brand's identity to resonate with modern, contemporary consumers. This involved updating collection book layouts, the color palette, typography, and overall visual elements to reflect a more contemporary and up-to- date, fashionable image.
Product Offering: Revamping the products and collection structure to align with current trends and preferences of the younger audience. Introducing fresh designs, color palettes, styles, and silhouettes that appeal to their fashion sensibilities while maintaining the brand's quality and craftsmanship.
Digital Presence: Enhance the brand's online presence and digital marketing strategies to reach younger consumers where they are most active. Invest in social media platforms, influencer collaborations, and engaging content that showcases the brand's new image and connects with the target audience.
Collaborations and Partnerships: Marketing department collaborate with influencers, and celebrities to increase brand visibility and credibility. Partnering with like-minded organizations and hosting events also helped to attract attention and generated some buzz.
Feedback and Adaptation: Continuously gathering feedback from the target audience through sales personals feedback, customer surveys, meetings at the stores, and social media interactions. Using the feedback to refine the brand's offerings, messaging, and strategies to better meet the evolving needs and preferences of younger consumers. Keeping an eye on sales data is crucial to analyse the over all performance.
The Discovery - User Personas
In order to better understand our customer base, I delved deep into comprehensive research aimed at uncovering insights about our target audience. Research started with comprehensive market and competitive analysis, as well as in-depth SWOT analysis. Using a segmentation method similar to creating personas and empathy maps, I developed detailed profiles of our customers, prioritizing their preferences and needs in all my design work. By clearly defining these target personas, I fostered a shared understanding among our global team and stakeholders about the aspirations and motivations of our customers, ultimately refining our strategic targeting efforts for greater success.
Iterative Prototyping Process
Following initial design discussions with the team, the process advances to sketching and iterative prototyping. Products undergo testing and refinement at each stage until achieving the minimum viable product, ready for production.
Throughout every phase, designs undergo validation with stakeholders to ensure alignment and progress. This iterative approach extends to testing and gathering feedback from launched collections and products, with ongoing development cycles.
As a head designer, I consistently managed three distinct development cycles concurrently: one in the ideation stage, another in development, and one that had already been launched.
Mood Boards
Iterative collection design process starts with in-depth trend analysis, market research and competitive analysis about rising trends. Research phase includes inspiration trips to London, Paris, and Shanghai, as well as attending to fabric fairs like Premier Vision in Paris.
Finally, I gathered all the insights together to form a solid concept for the whole season, and crafted mood boards for all 7 collection drops. Each drop presents a mini-collection with it’s own theme, color cards and trend focus.
Ideate; sketching process
Following initial design discussions with the team, the process advances to sketching and iterative prototyping process.
Similar to UX design, the process starts with quick hand-drawn sketches, selecting the key looks for each collection, and finally moving onward to crafting detailed instruction sheets to each style.
Cross-team collaboration
Throughout every phase, designs undergo validation with cross-team collaborations & meetings with stakeholders to ensure alignment and progress. As the head designer of the brand, I presented the initial mood boards, color themes, fabrics, and key looks in all meetings, validating and substantiating all design decisions with trend analysis, sales data from previous collections, and feedback from customers, ensuring that the design choices align with the intended goals and requirements of the project.
Usability Testing
Throughout the development cycle, prototypes underwent multiple rounds of testing. Due to company confidentiality policies, testing primarily involved team members. The key aspects examined during testing included:
Usability: Assessing whether the fit met the intended specifications.
Functionality: Ensuring that all elements served their intended purpose effectively.
3D silhouette: Verifying that the garment had the intended movement and shape.
Coordination: Evaluating the ability to mix and match items to create cohesive looks.
Inspiration: Checking if the design was on-trend and evoked a sense of delight.
The initial prototype focused on identifying critical usability errors that required immediate attention. Subsequent prototypes addressed and refined issues identified in earlier rounds of testing, progressively improving the design. Through iterative testing and adjustments, we ultimately arrived at a finalized design that met our standards.
Sales Presentation
Sales presentations mark the culmination of months of meticulous design refinement and testing. Following extensive iterations in usability testing and prototyping, the focus shifts to producing sales samples and orchestrating a comprehensive presentation for stakeholders.
As the head designer, I assumed responsibility for overseeing every aspect of the sales presentation. This included ensuring that all samples were delivered punctually and met the desired specifications in terms of fitting, fabric, and details. Additionally, I meticulously organized the collection presentation, curated cohesive looks, arranged racks, coordinated styling elements (including interior decor and music selections), and conceptualized marketing strategies.
The sales presentation serves as a pivotal milestone in the design process, representing the final opportunity to ensure that each piece of the collection aligns seamlessly with the brand image. By meticulously orchestrating this event, we not only showcased the collection to stakeholders but also reinforced its consistency and coherence within the broader brand narrative.
Marketing Briefs
The subsequent phase in our rebranding journey involved the formulation of comprehensive marketing briefs. Working closely with the marketing team and Art Director, I spearheaded collaborative meetings to ensure alignment on brand objectives. My role extended to creating Style Guides and defining the overall Visual Brand Identity for YourFACE, aiming for consistency and a cohesive brand aesthetic across all touchpoints.
Collection Presentation to store personnel
The culmination of the rebranding process involved presenting the revitalized collection to store personnel, equipping them with insights into upcoming trends, key looks from the collection, styling suggestions, and highlights of the season. As the head designer, I took the lead in presenting and coaching over 100 key individuals within a span of 2 days, ensuring a seamless transition and alignment of the brand vision across all touchpoints. Additionally, I provided guidance on fabrics and care instructions for each garment, ensuring that the staff could confidently convey this information to customers.
Development Handoff
During the rebranding process, my role extended beyond conceptualization and design to ensure that the crucial task of exporting assets and packaging deliverables for development was executed correctly and with high quality. Ensuring that the files were meticulously organized throughout the workflow was essential, enabling seamless collaboration with team members and facilitating continuity in the project. As a result of these efforts, the final product was delivered on schedule, aligning with the planned launch date for late fall 2018. This phase of the project was instrumental in not only revitalizing the brand but also in developing a cohesive collection that resonated with the target audience. Despite the challenges inherent in such an ambitious undertaking, including a condensed timeline, I successfully navigated the complexities of the process, ultimately achieving our objectives within the stipulated timeframe.
Results
The rebranding phase was a pivotal moment in our journey, marked by significant growth and positive feedback. With the spring 2018 collection, we experienced a remarkable turnaround, culminating in a re-launch that saw a remarkable 47% increase in sales within the first two months. This success was not incidental but the result of meticulous research and analysis, where we adeptly balanced the allure of the old with the freshness of the new.
Our new brand identity received widespread praise, particularly for its colors, key looks, and clear vision, which resonated with our audience and fostered a sense of connection. The introduction of comprehensive style guides brought coherence to our brand marketing efforts, offering customers a clearer understanding of our brand ethos and forging stronger bonds with our audience.
In my role, I spearheaded the creation of a robust portfolio of key items, strategically curated to meet market demand and customer preferences. These items flew off the shelves within days, underscoring the success of our rebranding efforts. Additionally, I introduced new strategic wardrobe classics that not only boosted sales but also laid the foundation for sustained growth across seasons.
Before the Rebrand: The Evolution of The Collection
The problem with Your FACE was the lack of a brand vision, resulting in mixed messages communicating the brand image. Several years of unstable team structure, especially on the design side, led to poor financial performance and a declining collection size. The brand image was outdated, and the brand wanted to appeal to a younger, more trend-focused consumer segment.
