Abracadabra! Building Lady Gaga's magical storefront experience on Hydrogen

After ascending to global stardom, Lady Gaga has spent almost two decades making her mark on music, fashion, and beauty. Her dynamism and influence are beyond compare. Now, with the release of her latest single and forthcoming album, she needed an online experience to match. That’s when Michal Klim received the call.

Michal is the co-founder and CTO at Commerce-UI, a boutique Shopify Plus agency that specializes in Hydrogen. An open-source Remix-based framework for headless commerce, Hydrogen is designed for building custom storefronts on Shopify—and is ideal for merchants looking for truly bespoke solutions. 

Lady Gaga’s team approached Commerce-UI to migrate the artist’s store from Liquid to Hydrogen. The goal? Transform the website into an interactive and innovative experience for fans that showcases her music, content, and merch—and reflects her distinct artistic vision.

Hydrogen became the perfect choice with its potential for building content-rich experiences and due to its greater design freedom and ability to meet the demanding pace of the music industry. “It's a framework that just gets out of your way,” says Michal. “You're free to code anything you want.” 

It allowed his team to deliver features like the site’s 3D album showcase and mood-based background effects. With a tech stack that includes Sanity—a headless CMS that integrates with Shopify—the team was also able to build a tailored editorial experience that also leveraged Hydrogen-specific features. 

The result of the agency’s work is an immersive digital space where Lady Gaga could freely express herself, promote her work, and connect with fans in unprecedented ways. Shopify product director, Malte Nuhn, sat down with Michal to discuss using Hydrogen to create an experience so in sync with the pop star’s brand, it feels like it was born this way.