Shopify themes for clothing brands should help bring out the brand culture and identity.
This guide will detail some of the most useful Shopify fashion themes that apparel merchants may use. We’ll outline both paid and free fashion themes.
Essential Features in Shopify Clothing Themes for Merchants
There are some critical areas of assessment that merchants should look for in the Shopify clothing themes.
Looking at each of these will allow merchants to decide on which theme will work best for them.
Collection Features
Collections help merchants neatly organize all clothing items into categories. Take, for example, men’s, women’s, kids', summer collection, autumn collection, street collection, back-to-school collection, and much more. Shopify clothing themes are designed to support such categorization, making it easier for customers to navigate through your store.
Furthermore, having collections allows merchants to highlight specific clothing items for certain occasions, seasons, and periods (i.e., summer, Valentine’s, back to school, etc.).
With this in mind, an effective clothing Shopify store theme can effectively highlight the various collections in your store, as well as user in product discovery.
Choosing the right Shopify clothing themes can provide limitless ways to creatively showcase collections, including mega menus, featured collection sections, and media collages, among many others.
Some of these include mega menus, featured collection sections, and media collages, among many others.
Image Real Estate
How much space does the theme allow your images to take up on the website?
The more “image real estate” that the theme allows for your brand's media, the more you can flaunt your clothing and lifestyle shots.
And hence, the better you can flaunt your brand's style, culture, and identity.
Take, for example, some themes can be quite limiting when it comes to banner sizing.
But other themes allow merchants to place videos on the banner section, even sizing the section to take up the whole first fold. Some even go as far as making the menu bar transparent, minimizing the visual obstruction for the video.
Customization Shopify Fashion Themes
The more varied a theme’s customization options are, the more you can mold it into a brand-fitting online facade. Plus, the more the site can stand from the competition. Shopify fashion themes offer extensive customization features, allowing you to tailor your store's design to reflect your unique brand identity.
Some Shopify fashion themes allow you to place animations on certain elements, each one triggering as customers scroll past them.
Some themes provide more font and color customization than others.
An expert web designer has more to work with if a Shopify theme has better customization options. That way, you’ll get a developer-grade, professional-looking, and highly engaging clothing website.
Conversion Features
Conversion features are on-site elements that drive website visitors to a purchase.
These include countdown timers, testimonial sections, cross-selling tools, a cart progress bar, and promo pop-ups, among other examples. As a result, they can help with product discovery and improve conversion rates.
These types of features are typically reserved for more premium themes, but if they’re well-utilized, they can be worth the returns.
Cart Features
Alongside conversion features are cart features.
Cart features are functions and optimizations that make shopping and checkout a breeze.
Some conversion elements can also be categorized as cart features, such as upsells, cross-sells, and cart progress bars.
But there are also cart features that are primarily for creating a better shopping experience
Take, for example, a cart drawer lets users access their cart from anywhere on the website without needing to be directed to a dedicated cart page. This makes shopping more unintrusive and streamlined.
With these must-haves taken into consideration: collection features, image real estate, customization, conversion features, and cart features, we’ve listed some of the best and most ideal themes you should use for your online clothing store.
Tips for Choosing the Best Theme for Clothing Shopify Store
Visual Appeal
Look for the best theme for clothing Shopify store with strong visual elements, like large image areas and customizable banners, to showcase your clothing and brand aesthetics effectively.
Collection Layouts
Opt for themes that offer flexible and creative ways to organize and display collections. This helps customers easily find products based on categories like season, style, or occasion, which is essential when choosing the best theme for clothing Shopify store.
Customization Options
Choose a theme that provides extensive customization features, such as various font and color choices, layout options, and animation effects. This allows you to tailor your store's appearance to match your brand identity.
Mobile Responsiveness
Ensure the theme is fully responsive, providing a seamless shopping experience on all devices. A mobile-friendly design is essential for reaching a broader audience.
Conversion-Boosting Features
Look for themes with built-in tools that encourage purchases, such as countdown timers, testimonials, and promotional banners. These features can enhance user engagement and boost sales.
User-Friendly Navigation
A theme with intuitive navigation, including features like mega menus and quick view options, helps customers find what they're looking for quickly and easily.
Support and Updates
Choose themes that come with reliable support and regular updates to ensure your store remains secure and up-to-date with the latest features and trends.
Best Shopify Theme For Clothing (Paid)
Here are some of the best paid Shopify themes for clothing merchants.
Blum
Blum is a feature-packed theme with in-depth customization at a friendly price point.
At just $170, merchants get some premium-looking features befitting luxury brands’ websites. These features include but are not limited to:
- A video banner with a dynamic transparent header,
- Some running text that may be tilted diagonally to give the site a more rugged appearance
- A featured product carousel that customers may scroll horizontally through
- A testimonials carousel that showcases satisfied customers’ statements
- A collection list that displays all your available collections on the page
- A countdown banner that gives a countdown timer some prominent space on the page
- A product hotspots section that allows users to hover over spots on an image to learn more about them.
Blum also offers wide customization options for each of its sections.
Its banners (e.g., video banners, slideshow banners, etc.), for example, let merchants adjust them to fill only 50% of the users’ screens all the way to 100%.
Plus merchants can change the color, content, and form of its popping elements, such as the prominent badge and the running text.
These elements give Blum a relatively eccentric design, setting it apart from clothing retail stores that contain nothing more than a plain white background.
Furthermore, the level of customization Blum allows lets merchants create a unique look and feel for their clothing store.
Shine
Shine is a cosmetic-focused theme with the features of an excellent clothing store. It's a versatile Shopify theme that any industry may utilize.
At just $210, it’s packed with features that can bring life and customer engagement to an otherwise basic-looking, standard online store.
Some of its features include:
- A featured collection section and a collection list. The former highlights a collection that you may want to showcase to your visitors. The latter displays the other collections you have in store.
- Text hotspot. This section lets merchants place “hotspots” on an image. When customers mouse over these hotspots, they reveal contextual text.
- Mega menu. This uses images alongside menu items to make navigation more visual. This can be especially useful for collections.
- Running content. Content that scrolls from one side of the screen to the other gives some much-needed motion to the website. Running content can be added to the header and the body of the page.
- Countdown banner. Countdowns may be added to banners to better highlight an upcoming promo or limited-time offer.
- A before-after section. This section is primarily a beauty & cosmetics feature, but it also has its uses for fashion & apparel.
- Quick add-to-cart buttons and a mini-cart. This makes shopping more streamlined for the user.
In addition to these features, Shine also gives users more control over their website’s fonts.
Shine lets users change the button fonts, subheading fonts, and menu item fonts, among other areas.
This level of font customization paired with Shine’s shopper-centric features creates a unique and engaging online store that can improve the online brand experience.
Paris
Paris is a popular choice among clothing entrepreneurs.
It’s a $250 fashion and apparel-centered theme with some hefty customization.
It also packs some useful features, such as:
- Collection sections, such as a collection carousel, collection tabs, collections list, and a featured collection. This variety in collection sections lets users highlight their clothing collections in various ways.
- Full-screen banner sections (e.g., slideshows, videos, images).
- An animated carousel bar. Merchants may select between a marquee and carousel animation.
- A Slide-out cart with its own marquee announcement bar. Merchants may use this to remind visitors about certain promos before they check out.
- A cart progress bar. This lets customers know how much more they need to add to their cart to avail of a promo (e.g., free shipping).
- A shop the look section. This lets visitors mouse over “hotspots” within an image to reveal what product is shown in the image.
- A scrolling banner. This banner contains customizable scrolling text. Users also have the option of placing an image background.
Out of the box, Paris has some hot, eye-striking color schemes that can put off a lot of web designers. But merchants may edit these colors to look better and more in-tune with their brands.
Paris has more in-depth color customization than most themes—cotaining global color, header & footer color, and color scheme settings.
At its price point, Paris can help create clothing stores that look developer-made, making it well worth its tag.
Reformation
Reformation is a bit more on the premium end of clothing themes, at $320.
It’s a versatile and customizable theme, with nearly 40 sections to play around with.
Some of these sections include, but not limited to:
- Collection tabs. This section displays the collections as tabs. When users click on each tab, they can see all the products of that collection.
- Reformation has a featured collection section wherein bold text is displayed over the the collection’s featured image. When users click on a different collection name, the background transitions to the respective collection’s featured image with a morph-like animation.
- Background video. A background video has various uses, such as above-the-fold content, or product page content to show the product in action.
- Before/After image. This draggable slider section lets visitors see and appreciate the difference between a before and after image.
- A shop the look section. This section lets merchants showcase how multiple clothing items would look when worn together. There are hotspots in this section that visitors can mouse over, letting them see what the product is.
- A scrolling announcement bar. This calls more attention than a static announcement bar. Reformation’s announcement bar can be set to either a carousel or marquee animation.
- The cart drawer lets users see the contents of their cart wherever they are on the website.
Reformation also provides a healthy, generous amount of media space for your products and images to really shine. There’s also an option for a transparent header, allowing merchants to show more of their banner.
Xclusive
Xclusive is on the higher end of the shelf at $400.
But it provides limitless customization and is possibly the most customizable theme on this list. Xclusive’s section settings, which are shown on the side panel when clicking any of the sections, can be overwhelming to newer Shopify users.
Xclusive also includes tremendous image real estate and over 40 sections to build your online store with.
Some key features include:
- Animated image columns that, when moused over, display some contextual text.
- Collection list, collection button list, and collection navigation. Xclusive has a handful of ways to show collections and products so that you can spice things up.
- Lookbook. A lookbook is essentially a gallery that shows potential customers the looks and styles they can pull off with the clothing items you have in store.
- Shop the look collection. This section displays a highlighted look with the product listings completing the look on the side.
- Image collage and image banner columns. These sections let merchants lay out image and text columns on a banner. You can even add buttons. These sections have a lot of use flexibility.
- Slide-out Cart. Xclusive has a slide out cart that visitors may access from anywhere on the site.
- Cart Cross-Sells. Xclusive’s slide-out cart can show site visitors other things they may like based on what’s already in the cart.
All of Xclusive’s product listings, whether on the catalog page or the shop the look collection section, have quick add-to-cart buttons. Once clicked, more product information is shown via a slide-out panel wherein visitors may choose their size and variant.
Visitors aren’t taken to a separate page, so they can keep shopping and exploring the site as they add things to their cart.
Xclusive is intended for a more advanced fashion store with tons of glamorous media assets and a skillful hand in web design.
When used properly, Xclusive can turn any clothing store’s website into one befitting a fashion giant.
Testing Paid Themes
Shopify merchants can test paid themes for themselves before purchasing them.
This will allow merchants a more hands-on experience with Shopify’s themes instead of relying just on what the sales page says.
To test a theme, go to the Shopify theme store.
Search for a theme.
Choose one and go to its listing.
Then select “Try Theme.”
This should download the theme to your theme library, allowing you to customize it and explore what it can offer for your store.
Best Free Shopify Themes For Clothing Store
If paid themes aren’t in your budget, some of the best free Shopify themes can still provide a solid platform for businesses to establish their online presence.
It’s important to note, though, that these free themes don’t have nearly as many features and customization options as paid themes.
Dawn
Dawn is the default Shopify theme that every Shopify merchant has access to.
Its minimal layout and design make an excellent canvas for more creative merchants to express their brands' identities and cultures.
But it's also not too stripped of personality that non-designing merchants would struggle to build an effective website.
As one of the best free Shopify themes, Dawn allows merchants to easily add their clothing brands' media assets to build a meaningful, eye-catching website.
Spotlight
Spotlight is one of the more unique themes on this list, given its minimal website layout.
It’s so simple and basic, it doesn’t even have a header. Or a menu, for that matter.
Its default homepage configuration consists of only the products on a plain white background.
This way, the products are given the spotlight with the theme’s wise use of negative space.
Spotlight’s approach can be effective if you have an established name elsewhere, making it a standout among the best free Shopify themes.
Trade
Trade is excellent for clothing retail and wholesale hybrids.
One of its unique features is its catalog page. Visitors can easily add items in bulk by clicking the counter below each Shopify product cart.
For online retailers planning to do wholesale down the road, Trade is a perfect option and ranks among the best free Shopify themes available.
Conclusion
Clothing, accessories, and jewelry businesses can use any Shopify theme they want. But that doesn't mean every Shopify theme will meet their needs.
A clothing theme is a feature-packed theme designed specifically for fashion shoppers. These features typically include a mini cart, collections lists, and a shop-the-look theme section, among other things.
Fashion themes are tailored to meet fashion brands' website demands. These brands need visual storytelling--something Shopify fashion themes can achieve with their image galleries and collection-centered sections.
So if you want to create a better and faster shopping experience for your clothes business, keep a keen eye on the Best Theme for Clothing Shopify Store.
Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently Asked Question
What are the key features to look for in a Shopify theme for clothing stores?
The most important features include mobile responsiveness, customizable design, speed and performance, user-friendly navigation, and product display options tailored to fashion items.
How can I customize my Shopify theme for better branding?
To customize your Shopify theme for branding, focus on consistent color schemes, custom fonts, and personalized banners. Use Shopify's theme editor to adjust the layout and incorporate your brand's logo and messaging.
Are free Shopify themes good for clothing stores?
Free Shopify themes can be a good starting point for small businesses or new stores. However, premium themes often offer more customization options, better performance, and specialized features for fashion stores.
How can I optimize my Shopify theme for conversions?
Optimize your theme for conversions by simplifying the checkout process, using high-quality product images, enabling product reviews, and adding clear calls-to-action throughout your store.
How often should I update my Shopify theme?
Regular updates to your Shopify theme ensure compatibility with Shopify's latest features and security updates. It's recommended to review and update your theme every 6-12 months or whenever major Shopify updates are released.