QATAR

LUXURY MODEST FASHION D2C

BILINGUAL WEBSITE BUILD

Harlienz had a boutique abayas and Vogue Arabia coverage. It didn't have a website built to carry any of it.

A Qatar luxury fashion house with a flagship boutique and real editorial credibility needed a bilingual Shopify store built to match both, without losing the story behind either. Here's what we built.

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ORIGIN

Founded in 2013 by designer Haya Al Adsani, Harlienz grew from a home setup into a production atelier, then a flagship boutique at Pearl Qatar, before ever having a proper website.

ORIGIN

Founded in 2013 by designer Haya Al Adsani, Harlienz grew from a home setup into a production atelier, then a flagship boutique at Pearl Qatar, before ever having a proper website.

PRESS

Genuine, repeated editorial coverage in Harper's Bazaar and Vogue Arabia, credibility most new D2C brands spend years trying to earn.

PRESS

Genuine, repeated editorial coverage in Harper's Bazaar and Vogue Arabia, credibility most new D2C brands spend years trying to earn.

MARKET

A Gulf luxury shopper who moves between English and Arabic, in a category where most competing sites default to English-only.

MARKET

A Gulf luxury shopper who moves between English and Arabic, in a category where most competing sites default to English-only.

NARRATIVE

Built around themes of identity ‘in between,’ cultures, strength and fragility, the casual and the ceremonial, a story the brand wanted the site itself to help tell.

NARRATIVE

Built around themes of identity ‘in between,’ cultures, strength and fragility, the casual and the ceremonial, a story the brand wanted the site itself to help tell.

Pain Point

Harlienz had the heritage and the press. The website was the one chapter still missing.

By the time Harlienz needed a website, most of the hard work was already done. A decade of growth, a flagship boutique, and real coverage in Vogue Arabia and Harper's Bazaar gave the brand credibility most online-only labels never reach. But none of that mattered without a website built to carry it, one that could speak to a bilingual Gulf audience, hold the brand's ‘in between’ narrative in something more considered than a paragraph, and give press features a home instead of a scattered set of screenshots. The challenge wasn't the brand's story. It was building a website considered enough, and functional enough for an English-and-Arabic audience, to finally give that story a digital home worthy of the boutique already open in Pearl Qatar.

“A brand with a decade of heritage and real press coverage doesn't need a generic template. It needs a website that finally catches the site up to everything else.”

Services deployed
SHOPIFY WEBSITE DESIGN & BUILD
SHOPIFY WEBSITE DESIGN & BUILD
SHOPIFY WEBSITE DESIGN & BUILD
BILINGUAL SITE ARCHITECTURE (EN/AR)
BILINGUAL SITE ARCHITECTURE (EN/AR)
BILINGUAL SITE ARCHITECTURE (EN/AR)
INTERACTIVE UX DESIGN
INTERACTIVE UX DESIGN
INTERACTIVE UX DESIGN
EDITORIAL & PRESS INTEGRATION
EDITORIAL & PRESS INTEGRATION
EDITORIAL & PRESS INTEGRATION
UI/UX STRUCTURING
UI/UX STRUCTURING
UI/UX STRUCTURING
ONGOING SITE SUPPORT
ONGOING SITE SUPPORT
ONGOING SITE SUPPORT
UGC & INFLUENCER MARKETING

Execution

The team behind it

Web strategists, Shopify developers, and copywriters built the site as a bilingual, story-led experience, not a translated afterthought.

The team behind it

Web strategists, Shopify developers, and copywriters built the site as a bilingual, story-led experience, not a translated afterthought.

Full bilingual build, English and Arabic, from the ground up.

Not an add-on toggle; the site was structured to work natively in both, for a Gulf audience that moves fluidly between them.

An interactive before/after feature built for the 'IN BETWEEN' campaign.

A custom, arrow-key-navigable slider let customers move between two photos, making the brand's "identity between cultures" theme interactive, not just written.

A press wall built into the homepage itself.

Harper's Bazaar and Vogue Arabia features were structured as a native part of the browsing experience, not a separate "As Seen In" page.

Poetic collection naming carried through a video-led homepage.

Names like "Sacred Motion" and "Slow Ritual" got room to read as considered pieces, while an autoplaying video hero gave the site the same sense of movement running through the brand.

01

Built the site natively bilingual, not translated after the fact.

A Gulf luxury audience shouldn't have to settle for an English-first experience with Arabic bolted on. We structured the site to work fully in both languages from the ground up, not as a secondary toggle.

03

Gave real press coverage a permanent home on the homepage.

Harper's Bazaar and Vogue Arabia features are hard-earned credibility. We built a dedicated press wall directly into the homepage, so that credibility did its work the moment someone landed on the site, not several clicks in.

02

Built a custom interactive slider for the brand's core ‘in between’ narrative.

A theme about identity existing between two spaces needed more than a paragraph to land. We built an arrow-key-navigable before/after feature that let customers physically move between two images, making the concept interactive instead of just written.

What we did

05

Built the site natively bilingual, not translated after the fact.

A brand built on movement and rhythm needed a homepage that moved too. We structured autoplaying video content into the hero experience, giving the first impression the same sense of motion running through the rest of the brand.

04

Structured collection pages to carry poetic, considered naming.

Collection names like ‘Sacred Motion’ and ‘Motion of the Soul’ needed room to breathe. We built product and collection pages that gave those names space to read as intentional, not squeezed into a generic grid layout.

Before & After

Before

After

Website

No website; brand presence limited to boutique and press

A fully built bilingual Shopify store

A fully built bilingual Shopify store

Language accessibility

English-only or no digital presence

Native English and Arabic experience throughout

Native English and Arabic experience throughout

Brand narrative

‘In between’ theme existed conceptually, not interactively

A custom before/after slider built around that exact theme

A custom before/after slider built around that exact theme

Press coverage

Scattered across social and external links

A dedicated press wall built into the homepage

A dedicated press wall built into the homepage

Product presentation

No digital home for poetic collection naming

Collection pages built to give names like ‘Sacred Motion’ room to read as intentional

Collection pages built to give names like ‘Sacred Motion’ room to read as intentional

Homepage experience

N/A, pre-launch

Video-led hero built around movement, not static banners

Video-led hero built around movement, not static banners

The heritage and the press were never the risk. Building a website considered enough to finally carry both, was.

The heritage and the press were never the risk. Building a website considered enough to finally carry both, was.

The heritage and the press were never the risk. Building a website considered enough to finally carry both, was.

Results

20K+

Monthly Website Visitos

2

Languages, One Native Experience

3

Editorial Features (Vogue Arabia, Harper's Bazaar)

20K+

Monthly Website Visitos

2

Languages, One Native Experience

3

Editorial Features (Vogue Arabia, Harper's Bazaar)

Beyond the numbers

A bilingual experience that finally matches how the brand's actual Gulf customers shop and read

The brand's core ‘in between’ narrative made interactive, not just described

Real editorial credibility doing its job on the homepage instead of sitting in a folder of press clippings

Image
Image
Image

A bilingual experience that finally matches how the brand's actual Gulf customers shop and read

The brand's core ‘in between’ narrative made interactive, not just described

Real editorial credibility doing its job on the homepage instead of sitting in a folder of press clippings

Image
Image
Image

A bilingual experience that finally matches how the brand's actual Gulf customers shop and read

The brand's core ‘in between’ narrative made interactive, not just described

Real editorial credibility doing its job on the homepage instead of sitting in a folder of press clippings

Image
Image
Image

This wasn't a website project. It was giving a decade of heritage, a flagship boutique, and real editorial credibility the bilingual, story-led home they'd never had online.

This wasn't a website project. It was giving a decade of heritage, a flagship boutique, and real editorial credibility the bilingual, story-led home they'd never had online.

View Website Live

Takeaways for Brand

Takeaways for Brand

Pin icon image

A bilingual audience deserves a bilingual site, not a translated afterthought.

Toggle-on translations read as an afterthought; native structure doesn't.

Pin icon image

Press coverage only builds trust if people actually see it.

Buried on a separate page, it does almost none of the work it's capable of.

Pin icon image

Abstract brand themes land harder when they're interactive.

A sentence about identity ‘in between’ says less than a slider that makes someone feel it.

Pin icon image

Product naming deserves layout that respects it.

Poetic names crammed into generic grids lose the intention behind them.

Pin icon image

A website is often the last piece, not the first.

Boutiques, press, and heritage can all precede the site, but the site still has to catch up and carry all of it.

Pin icon image

A bilingual audience deserves a bilingual site, not a translated afterthought.

Toggle-on translations read as an afterthought; native structure doesn't.

Pin icon image

Abstract brand themes land harder when they're interactive.

A sentence about identity ‘in between’ says less than a slider that makes someone feel it.

Pin icon image

A website is often the last piece, not the first.

Boutiques, press, and heritage can all precede the site, but the site still has to catch up and carry all of it.

Pin icon image

Press coverage only builds trust if people actually see it.

Buried on a separate page, it does almost none of the work it's capable of.

Pin icon image

Product naming deserves layout that respects it.

Poetic names crammed into generic grids lose the intention behind them.

01

Built the site natively bilingual, not translated after the fact.

A Gulf luxury audience shouldn't have to settle for an English-first experience with Arabic bolted on. We structured the site to work fully in both languages from the ground up, not as a secondary toggle.

02

Built a custom interactive slider for the brand's core ‘in between’ narrative.

A theme about identity existing between two spaces needed more than a paragraph to land. We built an arrow-key-navigable before/after feature that let customers physically move between two images, making the concept interactive instead of just written.

03

Gave real press coverage a permanent home on the homepage.

Harper's Bazaar and Vogue Arabia features are hard-earned credibility. We built a dedicated press wall directly into the homepage, so that credibility did its work the moment someone landed on the site, not several clicks in.

04

Structured collection pages to carry poetic, considered naming.

Collection names like ‘Sacred Motion’ and ‘Motion of the Soul’ needed room to breathe. We built product and collection pages that gave those names space to read as intentional, not squeezed into a generic grid layout.

05

Built the site natively bilingual, not translated after the fact.

A brand built on movement and rhythm needed a homepage that moved too. We structured autoplaying video content into the hero experience, giving the first impression the same sense of motion running through the rest of the brand.

What we did
Portfolio image
Portfolio image

Ready to look like you're already winning?

Ready to look like you're already winning?

Tell us about your project whether it’s a Website, Branding, or Social Media.

Tell us about your project whether it’s a Website, Branding, or Social Media.

Dubai × Bengaluru

hello@firstdraftstudio.in

Limited Client Partnerships

Dubai × Bengaluru

hello@firstdraftstudio.in

Limited Client Partnerships

Available for work

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Our team

#Creative Squad