Introduction
The Lacoste Members Experience elevates personalization by allowing customers to customize their favorite Lacoste pieces according to their own style and preferences. Transforming ordinary garments into unique creations, the experience reflects individuality and builds deeper brand engagement.
Merci-Michel was entrusted with delivering this service through UX and UI design, art direction, motion graphics, functional prototyping, and technical development.
The Challenge
Lacoste wanted to expand its members’ offerings with a digital service that would give customers a meaningful way to personalize garments. The challenge was to create a seamless, intuitive online tool that would faithfully capture the tactile essence of garment customization, while still working smoothly across devices and browsers.
Technical constraints added complexity: handling 3D garment rendering, enabling smooth drawing interactions, and maintaining performance under WebGL and storage limitations.
The Solution
Merci-Michel designed and built a browser-based customization tool that allowed members to personalize Lacoste garments with ease.
User Experience & Interaction
- Customers could use intuitive tools—marker, paint bucket, eraser, and a set of colors—to customize garment surfaces and details.
- A 3D interactive polo shirt model let users apply and preview their designs in real time, while a flat view offered precise editing.
- Once finished, users could choose angles, frames, and visual styles to present and share their personalized creations.
Technical Innovation
To deliver fluid performance in the browser, Merci-Michel engineered custom rendering and drawing systems:
- Texture management: Patch areas were grouped into atlas textures to fit WebGL shader limits.
- Interactivity: Patch selection was handled through vertex painting and ray-casting, enabling smooth hover, click, and outline effects without heavy draw-calls.
- Animation: The garment model responded dynamically to user input, with shaders creating elastic, fabric-like movements for a tactile effect.
- Drawing system: A bespoke buffer-based drawing engine was built to overcome browser limitations, ensuring continuous strokes, anti-aliasing, and reliable fill operations.
- Storage: Large design data was saved using IndexedDB, with optimized write processes to prevent frame drops and ensure a smooth user experience.
Merci-Michel’s emphasis on animation and responsiveness gave the garment a lifelike presence, enhancing immersion and emotional connection to the brand.
The Results
The Lacoste Members Experience provided a creative and immersive personalization journey for members, enabling them to design unique garments online with a sense of ownership and individuality.
The project was met with positive reception, with widespread participation from Lacoste’s audience. By combining innovative UX with technical precision, Merci-Michel delivered a digital experience that merged brand storytelling with user creativity—turning personalization into an act of engagement.
Conclusion
The Lacoste Members Experience highlights how fashion and technology can merge to deepen customer relationships. Through Merci-Michel’s technical expertise and design craft, Lacoste was able to offer its members a premium digital service that was both functional and emotionally engaging—reinforcing the brand’s innovation in both fashion and digital retail.
Create your own masterpiece and see the gallery here: Lacoste Members Experience
COMPANY: Merci-Michel
