Next
Girls Athleisure & Sportswear Designer - Licensed Brands - 12 Months Fixed Term Contract
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Working Pattern
Typically 5 days in the office, with core hours flexible between 8am-6pm.
Please note: Ideal start date September 2026
The Role
As a Girls Athleisure/sportswear Designer within Next’s Fashion Brands team, you will act as a creative guardian for a prestigious brand portfolio, ensuring the brand's unique "DNA" is translated into elevated, commercially successful designs across contemporary, casual sportswear!
By bridging the gap between trend research and technical execution, you’ll make a tangible impact on the aesthetic direction of our collections, reacting with agility to market data to keep our offerings ahead of the curve.
You will thrive in a highly collaborative environment, working side-by-side with partner brands and internal garment teams to bring concepts to life across diverse product categories. To ensure your success from day one, Next provides comprehensive brand immersion and technical onboarding, supporting your transition into our fast-paced, premium design landscape.
What You’ll Take On
- Design High-Impact Sportswear and Athleisure Collections: Create innovative, commercial, and elevated sportswear, activewear, and athleisure garments that blend technical functionality with licensed brand aesthetics.
- Manage Factory Partnerships: Liaise directly with global factories and specialist performance wear suppliers to oversee the manufacturing process, ensuring your garment shapes and technical details translate perfectly into the final product.
- Build Trusted Licensing Relationships: Foster strong, professional bonds with external license brand partners and internal teams to build a culture of confidence, trust, and seamless collaboration.
- Coordinate Cross-Functionally: Partner closely with Garment Technologists, Buying, and Merchandising teams to develop fit-for-purpose ranges that meet rigorous performance standards while hitting critical path deadlines.
- Translate Global Trends: Continually research and communicate emerging global trends in casual wear and sportswear silhouettes, fabric technology (such as sweat-wicking and multi-stretch), trims, and colour, turning trend inspiration into commercial design concepts.
- Deliver Technical Precision: Produce detailed and highly accurate Tech Packs, specifying garment construction, performance fabrics, trims, and fit specifications to provide factories with clear guidelines that minimise errors and maximise efficiency.
What You’ll Bring
To succeed in this role, you’ll need to balance high-level creative flair with a deep, practical understanding of performance apparel and brand guidelines. We are looking for an experienced designer who brings the following strengths to the team:
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- Versatile Sportswear and Athleisure Expertise: You possess an adaptable design "handwriting" that allows you to switch effortlessly between different licensed brand and trend aesthetics, age ranges, and product tiers across the girls' activewear market.
- Technical Mastery: You are highly proficient in Adobe Creative Suite and have a strong understanding of jersey and activewear construction, performance trims, and specialised techniques (like flatlock stitching, bonding, or ergonomic panelling). You know how to build thorough tech packs that respect factory capabilities and price points.
- Commercial Activewear Sharpness: You stay ahead of macro and micro sportswear trends, understanding how to design silhouettes and apparel ranges that are commercially viable, highly functional, and perfectly aligned with a license partner's DNA.
- Resilience and Agility: You thrive in fast-paced design environments, staying organised and positive even when priorities shift. You view fast-moving trends and brand changes as an opportunity to innovate rather than a hurdle.
- Clear Communication: You can present your activewear concepts with confidence and communicate complex technical and brand requirements clearly to both internal stakeholders, brand partners, and global suppliers.
- Forward-Thinking Skills: While not essential, experience with 3D design software, AI visualisation tools, or a background in technical sportswear garment construction will give you a significant head start.
Portfolios
To help us get a feel for your style, please attach a digital portfolio. We’re looking for work that demonstrates a sharp eye for the future of girls' casualwear and activewear, how these can be commercially viable for Next, and showcases your trend research, garment designs and CAD work within this as well! To help you put your best foot forward, we’ve put together a few top tips on what makes a portfolio stand out to our team.
Please ensure your digital samples are uploaded with your submission, as we are unable to consider applications that do not include a portfolio.
Sponsorship
Candidates wishing to apply who would require sponsorship for this role will be required to meet the Home Office sponsorship requirements. For further information please see: https://www.gov.uk/skilled-worker-visa.
We encourage early applications for our roles, as our recruitment process begins as soon as the role is advertised. If we successfully fill the position, this advert may close earlier than planned.
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About Us
You know Next, but did you know we’re a FTSE-100 retail company employing over 44,000 people across the Next group. We’re the UK’s 2nd largest fashion retailer and for Kidswear we’re the market leader. At the last count we have over 450 stores, plus the Next Online and it’s now possible to buy online from over 80 countries around the world! So we’ve gone global!
About The Team
- 25 days holiday plus bank holidays
- Profit-related bonus - based on company performance
- Management share options
- Company car or car allowance
- Private medical insurance
- Sharesave scheme - make savings from your net pay to buy NEXT shares at a discount
- Pension - fixed contribution rates from both an employer and employee perspective, but you're also able to make additional voluntary contributions (AVCs) if you wish to save more.
- Life assurance
- Group income protection
- Wagestream - helping you make the most out of your money
- Salary finance - offers access to affordable loans repaid through salary, simple savings and free financial education.
- 25% staff discount on most NEXT products - plus discount on other products
- Direct to work - NEXT orders delivered free to the office for collection
- VIP sale - early access to the NEXT sale
- Access to NEXT staff shops
- Octopus energy - like cycle-to-work, but for electric vehicles
- Free parking (excluding London locations)
- Travel2NEXT - bus services dependent on location
- On site dining facilities (excluding London locations)
- National and local discounts on goods and services - this includes things like discounted cinema tickets
- Wellhub - includes access to discounted gym membership
- Simply health - a healthcare subscription service
- Aviva Digicare Workplace+ healthcare service - 7 Free services including Digital GP appointments and an annual health check.
- Onsite GP - Leicester Head Office
- Onsite Physio - Leicester Head Office
- A range of dedicated 3rd party wellbeing partners
- Free eye testing - voucher to use at specific locations
Conditions apply to all benefits. These benefits are discretionary and subject to change.
We aim to support all candidates during the application process and are happy to provide workplace adjustments when necessary. Should you need support with your application due to a disability or long-term condition, feel free to get in touch with us by email headoffice_careers@next.co.uk (please include 'Workplace Adjustments' in the subject line), or call us on 0116 284 2486 and leave a voicemail.
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