FALLOW
Heritage headwear, built around Nashville. Not Texas, not Wyoming, not cowboy costume.
FALLOW is a concept project. No client, no brief handed down, just a question: what would a premium hat brand look like if it took its culture seriously? This is the answer. A store that feels less like retail and more like a place worth spending time in.
Deliverables / UX & Strategy / Visual Direction / Website Design / Art Direction
“The challenge wasn’t simply designing another e-commerce homepage. It was translating the feeling of open landscapes.”
THE BRIEF
Make it feel real. That was the whole brief, really. A premium hat brand that didn't read as costume or cliché.
The hard part wasn't the homepage. Anyone can build another e-commerce grid. The hard part was making open land, leather and craftsmanship feel like they belonged on a screen, and making people trust it enough to buy.
Design Direction
This didn't start in Figma. It started with research: the people, the places, the culture the brand was supposed to come from.
Research included:
- American ranch photography
- Working cowboys and horse culture
- Leather craftsmanship
- Desert landscapes and earthy palettes
- Heritage-inspired typography
Nothing here was stock. Every image was chosen, cropped and warmed by hand until the set felt like one world instead of ten different ones.
Film did a lot of the heavy lifting too. Unforgiven, No Country for Old Men, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Yellowstone. Not for the plots. For the light, the pacing, the stillness. A restrained serif next to a clean sans-serif carried that same balance: old enough to feel earned, clean enough to feel current.
User Experience
The homepage was designed to unfold like a story. Large landscape imagery establishes atmosphere before introducing the brand and products. Clear hierarchy, generous spacing and simple navigation keep the experience focused while allowing the photography to lead.
REFLECTION
The biggest lesson here wasn’t visual. It was cultural. Get the research right, and the design almost designs itself. The Nashville-not-Texas distinction shaped everything downstream: the photography, the copy, even the nav.
The real tension was editorial versus commercial. Let the story breathe too much and you forget you’re selling hats. Push product too hard and you kill the atmosphere you just built. Every section got weighed against that.
If I revisited it, I’d add motion. Subtle, not flashy. Enough to make the story feel alive without breaking the calm this whole thing was built on.