Saint Laurent

Saint Laurent sought to captivate a younger, digitally savvy audience by creating a flagship e-commerce site that blended high-end storytelling with an immersive shopping experience. The challenge was to create a website that honored Saint Laurent’s iconic identity while intuitively guiding users from exploration to purchase.

Inspired by the “island” layouts in the brand's physical stores, AREA 17 brought this concept online with a curated, magazine-like format where products are presented with visual storytelling emphasis, encouraging exploration and inviting deeper engagement with the brand’s aesthetic. The design reintroduces the classic Saint Laurent logotype alongside rich, cinematic visuals, marking a shift from previous minimalism to a warmer, more evocative look that reinforces the brand’s timeless edge.

With Vaccarello’s vision for Rive Droite as a cultural destination in mind, AREA 17 reimagined the platform as a lifestyle-driven extension of the Saint Laurent brand.

The platform combines curated luxury offerings — including limited-edition pieces, vintage items, books, music, and exclusive collaborations — with experiential content like live-streamed events and exhibitions. Anchored in the brand’s seminal Rive Gauche concept, Rive Droite prioritizes cultural engagement over direct commerce, creating an explorative space that resonates with audiences attuned to Saint Laurent’s artistic ethos. The platform shares the main site’s transactional backbone, ensuring a smooth user journey for visitors who do choose to make a purchase.

To support Saint Laurent’s expansion into cinema, AREA 17 created a digital presenced for Saint Laurent Productions — Anthony Vaccarello’s debut film initiative — leveraging our adaptable design system. 

This space highlights original films and collaborations with renowned directors, designed to showcase the brand’s bold aesthetic and provocative storytelling. Targeted at art and film enthusiasts, the platform establishes Saint Laurent in the realm of auteur-driven cinema, broadening its cultural influence and reinforcing its identity in a new creative domain.

To support Saint Laurent’s expanding digital presence, AREA 17 developed a scalable design system that standardizes brand visuals across ysl.com, Rive Droite, and Saint Laurent Productions. 

Built on a headless architecture with React for the front end and Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC) for the back end, the system decouples front- and back-end functions, enabling internal teams to manage and update content independently across the brand's digital platforms. This setup ensures brand consistency and reduces reliance on external support, empowering Saint Laurent to adapt quickly as it ventures into new creative fields.