Custom Design & Development for FREE ACTS
How Avelize designed and built the FREE ACTS storefront: an editorial, film-led Shopify experience for a fashion label, with lookbooks, stockists, and worldwide duties-included checkout.
About Free Acts
FREE ACTS INTERNATIONAL is a fashion label making garments and objects for warm weather. The brand sells through its own site and through stockists, and its identity is built on film and editorial photography rather than conventional product marketing — collection films, photographer collaborations, and long-form editorial pieces sit at the same level as the shop.
The challenge
An editorial-led fashion brand is badly served by a standard Shopify theme. The default structure assumes the product grid is the homepage and everything else is secondary, which inverts how this brand communicates: the film and the edit come first, and the garment follows. The site also had to carry a lookbook, an index, editorial features, and a stockist network alongside a working shop — while shipping worldwide with duties included, which changes what the customer needs to see before checkout.
Scope of work
- Custom design direction for an editorial-first storefront
- Custom Shopify theme development — built, not configured
- Editorial architecture: lookbook, edits, index, and collection films
- Product architecture across outerwear, shirts, trousers, tops, knitwear, accessories
- Size guide with international size conversion and fit guidance
- Stockist network presentation alongside direct sales
- Worldwide shipping and duties-included messaging in the purchase path
The solution
Avelize designed and built the storefront around the brand’s own logic rather than Shopify’s defaults. Film and editorial run full-bleed at the top of the experience, with the shop reached through a restrained navigation that treats LOOKBOOK, EDITS, and INDEX as first-class destinations rather than blog links. The visual language is deliberately quiet — near-monochrome, minimal typography, no promotional furniture — so the photography carries the page. The purchase path states worldwide express shipping with duties included up front, which removes the single biggest hesitation for an international fashion buyer.
Technical approach
- Custom Shopify theme built from scratch with bespoke section architecture
- Full-bleed video and editorial sections with the shop as a secondary path
- Lookbook, edits, and index templates as distinct content types
- Size guide with international conversion and fit guidance in the product flow
- Stockist directory template
- Country and region selection with duties-included messaging
- Typography and layout system matching the brand’s editorial direction
Outcome
FREE ACTS has a storefront that reads as a fashion publication that happens to sell, rather than a shop with a blog attached. The editorial work and the collection films carry the homepage, the shop is one click away, and the international purchase path is explicit about shipping and duties before the customer reaches checkout.
Related services
Live product: https://freeacts.com/
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Avelize delivers custom Shopify development, technical SEO, and UX work for ecommerce brands. Contact us to discuss your project, or see the full portfolio.