Yes, what you’re trying to achieve is absolutely possible — and without the need to manually duplicate or restructure your entire catalog.
You can list each product (like different colors or sizes) separately in your collection pages, and then group them visually as variants on the product page using a simple metafield-based system.
here is an app specifically for this purpose:
Product as Variants by OnlyWeb
It allows you to treat separate products (like “Chiffon Bag - Red” and “Chiffon Bag - Blue”) as if they were variants of a single product, without compromising on SEO, inventory, or customization.
What it does:
Displays grouped products on the product page using a theme block
Third-party apps make it easy to separate variants I own the Stamp ‑ Variants on Collectionand we help merchants display variants separately on the collection page and home page. You can customize the settings per collection to show or hide specific variants, filter variants, or separate them by specific options. For example, you can create a “Gold” collection and display only gold-related variants.
Worth clarifying something here since the terminology trips a lot of people up.
“Splitting” variants into separate products usually means actually duplicating them in the Shopify admin, creating individual product entries for each colour. That works, but it’s a headache to manage (separate inventory, separate URLs, separate SEO) and most merchants don’t actually want that.
What @DASCPA is describing is different: keeping variants under one product in the back end, but having each one show up as its own card on collection pages. That’s a display-level change, not a data-level one.
If that’s what you’re after, Variantify handles exactly this. It works on the storefront only. Your admin, inventory, and product structure stay untouched. Each colour variant gets its own card with the right image, and it’s compatible with OS 2.0 themes including Savor. No need to find theme-specific Liquid files.