Cotone Collection

Scope Creative Direction, Photography, UX/UI, E-Commerce Design / Client Cotone

Launching an Irish luxury sleepwear brand from scratch — photography, brand alignment, and a bespoke e-commerce platform built to sell.

/ The Challenge

A luxury brand with no visual identity and no digital presence.

Cotone was founded by Hollianne Phelan on a clear and considered premise: slow fashion, made to last, designed in Ireland, manufactured in Portugal from 100% European cotton. The brand ethos was already formed — but it had no visual language, no imagery, and no platform to sell from.

The challenge was to translate that ethos into something a customer could feel before they ever touched the product. Luxury sleepwear lives or dies on atmosphere — the quality of the light, the texture of the fabric, the sense of considered comfort. If the photography and the website didn't communicate that immediately, no amount of copy would compensate.

Everything had to be right on day one. There was no existing audience to soft-launch to, no existing visual library to draw from. The photoshoot, the brand alignment, and the website all had to land together.

/ The Solution

Photography first. Everything else followed.

The project began with the photoshoot — because without the imagery, there was no website worth building. We location scouted and secured a private country estate in Kilkenny as the setting for Cotone's debut product lifestyle shoot. It was the right call: the architecture, the light, and the setting gave the brand an immediate sense of heritage and quality that no studio could have manufactured.

This was a full production shoot. I directed the entire session — model direction, styling coordination, composition, and lighting — across three product colourways and five product variations. Over 100 final images were delivered per colourway, giving Cotone a deep visual library to draw from across launch, social, and ongoing campaigns.

In parallel, I worked with Hollianne through a discovery process to shape the visual branding and align it tightly to her brand strategy. The brand identity existed in broad strokes — the discovery work sharpened it into something that could be applied consistently across every touchpoint. The navigation architecture, the editorial tone, the product presentation — all of it emerged from that process.

001 Atmosphere before product Imagery and design that communicated the quality of the product before a customer read a single word.

002 Clean without cold A visual language that felt luxurious and considered, without the distance that often comes with minimalist fashion brands.

003 Built to sell A bespoke WooCommerce platform designed for conversion from the ground up, not adapted from a template.

/ What I Delivered

Creative across every stage.

I held full creative ownership from pre-production through to launch — photography, brand alignment, UX, and build. There was no handoff point in this project. The same creative eye that directed the photoshoot shaped the website that housed it.

Creative Direction & Production Planning
Full Product Lifestyle Photography
Brand Alignment & Visual Strategy
Website UX/UI Design
Bespoke WooCommerce E-Commerce Build

/ The Website

A shopfront worthy of the product.

WooCommerce was the right choice — not because it was familiar, but because the brief required a bespoke build that a template platform couldn't deliver. The site needed to feel like the brand: unhurried, considered, and visually led.

The navigation was kept deliberately minimal — Shop, Our Mission, Dream In Comfort — a structure that emerged from the discovery process and mapped directly to how Cotone's customers actually moved through the brand. Product pages were designed to let the photography lead, with clean typography and a frictionless path to purchase.

The checkout flow was designed with the same restraint as the rest of the site — no unnecessary steps, no visual noise, nothing to interrupt a customer at the moment they'd decided to buy.

/ Outcomes

A launch that sold out. A brand that got noticed.

001 First collection sold out within months of launch Cotone's debut product run sold through within the first few months of going live. Every sale was made directly through the website — no third-party platform, no marketplace. The site was the entire sales infrastructure.

002 Photography drove the entire launch campaign The images from the Kilkenny shoot were used across every channel — website, social, press, and campaign. The visual identity of the brand at launch was built entirely from that single production.

003 Brown Thomas came calling at the one-year mark The success of the launch caught the attention of Brown Thomas. By Cotone's first anniversary, the brand had secured a stockist relationship with Ireland's most prestigious department store — a validation that's difficult to manufacture and harder still to accelerate.

004 A second collection followed The ongoing relationship led to a follow-on shoot for the Natural Elegance Set in 2025, additional website updates, and the continued expansion of Cotone's visual library.

005 Featured across Irish media Cotone has been covered by Irish Tatler, RTÉ Guide, IMAGE, Business Post, and Business Plus — press built on the back of a brand and visual identity launched from day one with the right creative foundation.

006 Full creative ownership, one lead Photography, creative direction, brand alignment, UX, and e-commerce build — conceived and delivered by a single creative director from first brief to launch day.