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Womenswear Tailoring and Outerwear Designer - Laura Ashley
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Job Description
Working Pattern: Typically 5 days in the office, with core hours flexible between 8am-6pm.
The Role
As the Tailoring & Outerwear Designer for Laura Ashley, you will bring a fresh, contemporary vision to our heritage-inspired collections. Your primary mission is to seamlessly blend timeless elegance with modern style, designing beautiful structured garments, tailored coordinates, and standout outerwear that our customers will love.
In this role, you will make a significant impact by honouring the signature aesthetic of the Laura Ashley brand while driving its future design direction. You will collaborate closely with a passionate, multi-functional team, including Buyers, Merchandisers, and Technologists to bring cohesive collections to life.
What You’ll Take On
- Shape Brand Collections: Conceptualise and develop seasonal ranges across structured tailoring, smart coordinates, and outerwear that reflect the unique identity of Laura Ashley.
- Gather Global Inspiration: Undertake inspirational travel and market research trips to identify global trends, source beautiful fabrications, and gather styling directions that elevate our product offer.
- Perfect Fit and Finish: Partner closely with garment technologists and pattern cutters during fit sessions to ensure immaculate tailoring details, premium construction, and perfect silhouettes.
- Deliver Rapid Turnarounds: Respond swiftly and creatively to design briefs, producing high-quality CADs, technical packs, and design layouts under fast-paced timelines.
- Design to Cost: Work creatively within established price point guidelines, ensuring our products maintain high design integrity and quality without compromising on style.
- Collaborate Cross-Functionally: Work hand-in-hand daily with buying, merchandising, and external manufacturing partners to ensure ranges are commercial, cohesive, and delivered on time.
What You’ll Bring
- Tailoring & Outerwear Expertise: Proven experience designing structured fashion, with a strong understanding of tailoring construction, outerwear silhouettes, and fabric draping.
- Technical Proficiency: Essential, expert-level knowledge of Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to create precise, detailed CADs and comprehensive factory tech packs.
- Brand & Commercial Taste: A strong natural taste level and an eye for spotting trends, combined with the unique ability to translate heritage style into commercially successful, modern products.
- Strong Team Spirit: Outstanding teamwork and people skills, you are highly organised, handle busy design seasons with ease, and communicate your ideas clearly.
- Industry Insight: Solid experience working with external factories, brands, or suppliers within a fashion retail environment.
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Portfolios
To help us get a feel for your style, please attach a digital portfolio to your application. We are looking for work that demonstrates a sharp eye for the future of Tailoring and Outerwear, how your ideas can be commercially viable for NEXT, and showcases your direct design and CAD work. 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.
Applications without a portfolio will not be considered.
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.
At NEXT, we believe the best work happens when there are no barriers to collaboration. That’s why we are a Google-powered workspace. From your very first day, you’ll be using the full Google Workspace suite; Docs, Drive, and Meet, to stay connected and move fast.
If your previous experience is rooted in other software suites, don’t worry! We’ll point you to a digital Google toolkit the moment you join, packed with handy guides and insider tips to help you transition smoothly and hit the ground running.
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 on-line from over 80 countries around the world! So we’ve gone global!
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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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