Antoni Kirk Apparel
A luxury resort-wear brand, built end to end in seven weeks, inside the limits of Wix Classic Editor.
Overview
Five disciplines, one platform, one person
Antoni Kirk Apparel is a Palm Springs luxury resort-wear label known for a bold, theatrical aesthetic and small-batch, ethically made knits, signature pieces like fitted kaftans with dramatic Watteau backs, and a manifesto that urges clients to be the "headliner" in their own lives. That spirit lives in the site's hero line, "Arrive. Slay. Repeat."
The brand needed a digital storefront that mirrored its high-quality, campy, distinctive presentation, and a partner who would not only build the platform but professionalize the brand's entire digital operation ahead of its inaugural launch. The engagement spanned five disciplines usually split across a team: brand and design-system work, front-end development, custom Velo backend, e-commerce setup, and technical SEO. All of it delivered on a single platform, hands-on rather than delegated, in seven weeks.
The Challenge
Luxury, inside a platform's limits
The objective was a comprehensive e-commerce build and operational setup from the ground up, on a strict timeline, that read as genuinely luxury rather than templated. All of it living inside Wix Classic Editor, a platform whose convenience carries real limits:
- Studio-only features were off the table. No native scrolling text marquee and no global stylesheet for site-wide CSS control.
- Partial responsiveness. Full-width strips reflow, but text boxes and images hold fixed dimensions, and the mobile layout has to be adjusted by hand, separately from desktop.
- Complex retail requirements. Small-batch inventory, intricate product variations, brand-specific AI interactions, legal compliance, and documentation thorough enough for the client to self-manage.
- A launch lock. With a firm June 1, 2026 launch and pre-orders enabled, changes had to be safe, reversible, and correct the first time.
Signature
"Blaze", the hero animation
The hero is the brand's first impression, so it earned real motion design. After seven iterations across four concept directions, the approved "Blaze" sequence choreographs the three words on their own paths, each with six-level layered drop shadows for depth.
ARRIVE
Slides in from the left in fuchsia, medium weight.
SLAY
Scales up from large to dominant in white, the moment the eye lands on.
REPEAT
Slides in from the right in turquoise, medium weight.
Design System
Pulled from source, not guessed
Every color, weight, and token was extracted directly from the brand's Adobe Illustrator source files and mapped one-to-one onto Wix's theme slots, so the platform's palette matched the brand exactly rather than approximating it.
Accessibility as Craft
A fraction of a ratio, treated as a real problem
Luxury and accessibility were treated as the same goal, not competing ones. Contrast was measured against WCAG AA rather than eyeballed, which surfaced two real failures and two deliberate fixes.
4.53:1
Turquoise links read at only 4.42:1 on ink. Nudging the hex from #008B9C to #008D9E lifted it past the line, invisible to the eye, decisive to a contrast checker.
5.6:1
White on fuchsia failed badly at 3.2:1. The counterintuitive fix: dark ink text on the same fuchsia reads near 5.6:1, so the brand's boldest color stayed loud while becoming legible.
An ADA accessibility statement and opt-out mechanism were written and shipped live alongside the visual fixes.
Commerce, SEO & Handoff
Professionalized past the website
The storefront launched fully transactional: payment gateway, tax rules, and shipping zones configured, pre-orders enabled for the initial drop, and a tested launch-day promo code in place. The work extended past the website into the business itself, with photography optimization, legal compliance checks, and a financial audit so the backend was as polished as the public-facing brand.
Search foundations were laid by hand rather than left to defaults: hand-written meta titles and descriptions on every page, Organization, Person, Event, and product schema, a configured robots.txt, an auto-generated sitemap submitted for indexing, and Google Search Console connected and verified. DNS was migrated cleanly from GoDaddy to Wix and fully propagated. Finally, comprehensive operational documentation was authored so the client could confidently self-manage listings, notifications, and ongoing marketing after launch.
Arrive. Slay. Repeat.
Antoni Kirk Apparel
What This Build Demonstrates
Full-stack ownership, start to launch
Working within a platform's limits
Recreating Studio-tier behavior on Classic Editor and solving real backend errors with custom Velo, instead of fighting the platform.
Design fidelity from source
Pulling tokens straight from the brand's Illustrator files so it renders exactly, not approximately.
Accessibility as craft
Treating a fraction of a contrast ratio as a real problem worth solving, without dulling the brand.
One person, every layer
Design, development, brand voice, commerce, SEO, and business professionalization carried through to a locked, launch-ready site.