LUXENOIR
Crafting a luxury e-commerce experience in code
LUXENOIR is a luxury fashion e-commerce storefront built to demonstrate that premium brand experiences can be achieved with modern frontend tooling. The project explores how visual sophistication, smooth interactions, and e-commerce functionality can coexist without compromising performance. This case study examines the design decisions, component architecture, and trade-offs behind building a high-end shopping experience.
The Product Vision
Luxury e-commerce has a visual language. Black backgrounds, generous whitespace, restrained typography, and imagery that breathes. The challenge was translating this aesthetic vocabulary into a functional storefront—not as a static mockup, but as a working application with real interactions.
The product needed to communicate exclusivity without being hostile. Luxury brands often sacrifice usability for atmosphere: hidden navigation, cryptic labels, slow-loading hero videos. I wanted to prove that elegance and usability aren't mutually exclusive.
The scope included a full storefront: homepage with curated sections, product browsing with filtering, individual product pages, cart functionality, and wishlist management. Each of these needed to feel cohesive—the same attention to detail in the hero section should carry through to the cart drawer.
Design & UX Decisions
The visual direction was dark-mode first. Black and near-black backgrounds with white typography create the contrast that luxury brands rely on. Accent colors were used sparingly—gold hints in hover states, subtle gradients in buttons—never competing with the photography.
Typography was deliberately restrained. A single font family with careful weight variation: light for body copy, medium for labels, bold only for primary headings. Letter-spacing was widened on uppercase elements to reinforce the premium feel without requiring decorative fonts.
Spacing followed a generous scale. Luxury is about room to breathe. Product cards have substantial padding. Sections are separated by vertical space that would feel excessive in a utility-focused interface. This breathing room is part of the brand expression.
Interaction patterns were kept conventional. Navigation is where users expect it. Product cards behave predictably. The cart icon shows a count. Luxury aesthetics shouldn't require users to learn a new interaction model—the sophistication is in the execution, not the novelty.
Translating Design Into Code
Component Architecture
Components were organized by domain rather than type. Product-related components—ProductCard, ProductGrid, ProductGallery—live together. This colocation makes it easier to maintain consistency within a feature area and understand relationships at a glance.
A strict prop interface approach prevented style drift. ProductCard accepts a defined Product type and specific variant options, not arbitrary className overrides. This constraint ensures that every product card looks the same regardless of where it's rendered.
Shared UI primitives—Button, Badge, Input—were built first and used everywhere. When the button hover state needed adjustment, one change propagated throughout the application. This upfront investment in primitives paid off as the page count grew.
The Product System
Products are typed strictly: id, name, price, category, images array, availability status, rating, and optional sale price. This type definition serves as documentation and catches integration errors at compile time.
The product grid uses CSS Grid with responsive breakpoints. On mobile, products stack single-column. Tablets show two columns. Desktop expands to four. The grid template adjusts, but card dimensions remain proportional—maintaining visual rhythm across viewports.
Filtering and sorting happen client-side for this implementation. URL parameters sync with filter state, enabling shareable filtered views. A more complete solution would paginate server-side, but for a portfolio piece demonstrating frontend craft, client-side filtering keeps the focus on the interface.
Cart and State Management
Cart state lives in Zustand, a minimal state management library. The store handles adding, removing, and updating quantities. Persistence uses localStorage, surviving page refreshes without backend infrastructure.
The cart drawer slides in from the right, overlaying the current page. Closing it doesn't lose your place. This pattern is familiar from native mobile commerce apps and maintains context better than a full page navigation.
Wishlist functionality uses the same state pattern. Items can be moved between wishlist and cart with consistent animations, reinforcing that these are related but distinct collections.
Visual Polish Details
Image handling was critical. Products use Next.js Image with appropriate sizing and priority flags. Hero images are prioritized for LCP; below-fold product images lazy load. Placeholder blurs provide perceived performance while images download.
Hover states are subtle but consistent. Product cards lift slightly with a shadow. Buttons shift color smoothly. Links underline on hover. These micro-interactions add tactile quality without drawing attention to themselves.
The flash sale countdown timer uses real time calculations, updating every second. The visual treatment—bold numbers, muted labels—creates urgency without feeling aggressive. The timer component is pure: it receives an end time and renders remaining duration.
Performance & Trade-offs
Performance was a conscious investment. The homepage loads quickly despite image-heavy content. Route prefetching means navigation feels instant. The JavaScript bundle stays reasonable because dependencies were carefully selected.
The trade-off was scope. Real e-commerce requires inventory management, payment processing, order fulfillment, customer accounts. LUXENOIR stops at the cart. This boundary was intentional—the goal was demonstrating frontend craft, not building production commerce infrastructure.
Accessibility received attention but not exhaustive coverage. Keyboard navigation works. Focus states are visible. Alt text describes images. A production launch would require more rigorous testing, but the foundation is solid.
The visual language is consistent end-to-end. The same spacing scale, color palette, and typography rules apply from hero to footer. This consistency is the result of deliberate constraint: fewer options meant faster decisions and more coherent output.
Learnings
Building LUXENOIR reinforced that luxury is about restraint. The temptation to add visual flourishes—complex animations, gradient overlays, decorative elements—was constant. The discipline to remove rather than add produced a more sophisticated result.
Component API design matters enormously in UI-heavy projects. The time spent defining prop interfaces upfront prevented hours of debugging inconsistent variants later. TypeScript's strictness was an ally, not an obstacle.
I underestimated how much time product photography selection would take. In a real project, this would be handled by a creative team. For a portfolio piece, curating Unsplash images to feel cohesive was surprisingly time-consuming. Next time, I'd establish image guidelines earlier.
The project confirmed that performance and visual richness can coexist. Next.js Image optimization, careful lazy loading, and minimal JavaScript dependencies meant the site feels fast without sacrificing the immersive quality that luxury brands require. The frameworks are mature enough that these optimizations are mostly automatic if you follow best practices.