VESPERA
A flagship Florentine jewellery house, est. mcmlviii — and a website that didn't reflect any of it.
The bar wasn't subtle: build a digital experience that doesn't feel like a website. It should feel like walking into a private atelier on Via de' Tornabuoni. Restrained. Editorial. Patient. No discounts. No urgency banners. No "Buy Now." Jewellery for the woman who already knows.
We started from a different question. Not "what template fits this brand" — but "what would the digital equivalent of a Bulgari boutique feel like?" That question shaped everything: the typography, the silence between sections, the way prices read (£8,640, never "starting from"), the way the entire site refuses to shout.
WordPress and WooCommerce under the hood — but every default has been rebuilt. Astra stripped to nothing, then layered back with ~3,000 lines of hand-written CSS. No page builder. Fourteen pages, each earning its place — from the founding-story Heritage page to five legal pages with Roman-numeral articles set in gold. Nothing about the front says WordPress.
The discipline runs deeper than code. Silence is luxury — every section breathes. The wine red appears once on the whole site, on hover. No exclamations, no emojis, no countdown timers. Roman numerals where they belong. Italian as texture. Patience is the brand.
Palette
Nine considered tones — bone, cream, paper, espresso, char, ink, stone, gold and wine. No bright accents. The wine red appears once, on hover — the loudest moment on the entire site.
Type
Bodoni for the wordmark and headlines, Cormorant Italic for editorial accents, Italianno as the handwritten signature, Jost for utility.
Build
WordPress 6.9 + WooCommerce. Custom theme on a stripped Astra base. ~3,000 lines of hand-written CSS, no page builders, no plugin bloat. Yoast SEO-ready. Multilingual-capable. Fully client-owned.
Worn by the quiet luminous.