Senior Fashion Designer

Job brief:

The Senior Designer is responsible for leading the end-to-end design direction for assigned categories, delivering seasonal ranges that are trend relevant, commercially strong, and clearly executed from concept to stores. This role sets clear trend and print direction, ensures cohesive but diverse colour and print stories, and translates creative intent into accurate technical execution through high quality (detailed) tech packs and proactive involvement in fittings. The Senior Designer partners closely with vendors, treating their design capability as an extension of Blooming, and ensures that design, critical path, and range building are delivered on time and aligned to customer needs, product learnings, and brand identity. In addition, the Senior Designer ensures seasonal trend direction is translated into clear execution across customer touchpoints, including photoshoots, marketing content, and in store presentation, so the final customer experience reflects the intended story and quality level.

Key Responsibilities

1) Trend Direction and Seasonal Storytelling

• Conduct trend and market research to define seasonal direction, including key trends, key colours, key silhouettes, techniques, fabrications across NOOS, Core and fashion.
• Own the seasonal trend direction for the assigned categories and translate it into a clear, trend story that includes defined moodboards, key colours, print directions, must have silhouettes.
• Ensure prints are cohesive across the collection but distinct enough to avoid repetition, with a clear hierarchy of hero prints, secondary prints, and supporting coordinates.
• Communicate seasonal trend direction clearly to vendors through reference boards, print directions, pantone guidance, enabling vendors to develop aligned range proposals and increasing vendor design input to a target of at least 20 percent of the seasonal range.

2) Range Building and Collection Architecture

• Lead range building in line with seasonal strategy, creating a balanced assortment across silhouettes, fabrics, colour, and print that is diverse yet cohesive, and built from customer demand, store feedback, and trading performance. Translate product learnings into continuous improvement season on season by refreshing and upgrading bestsellers, strengthening repeat products, and proactively identifying new cash cows and future NOOS opportunities.
• Partner with Buying to align range direction to commercial priorities and launch calendars.

3) Vendor Collaboration and External Design Input

• Proactively source design ideas, print options, and fabric innovations from vendor design teams
• Set clear expectations and briefs for vendors, review and respond to submissions within 48 hours, and provide structured guidance to reach Blooming standards, while building strong vendor partnerships that accelerate speed to market and improve execution quality through continuous feedback loops and seasonal post mortems.

4) Critical Path Discipline and On Time Execution

• Maintain proactive weekly critical path discipline, ensuring all design actions and approvals including tech pack handover, sample comments, print approvals, and range sign offs are completed on time, while identifying risks early and proposing mitigation plans to protect on time delivery and launch readiness.
• Use critical path awareness during fittings and reviews to make smart decisions on what can realistically be improved within timeline and what needs escalation.

5) Fit Participation and Design Quality Control

• Proactively attend fittings and provide design input on fit, styling, proportion, comfort, and aesthetic finishing in collaboration with the technical team.
• Review samples for print clarity, colour accuracy (including NOOS), workmanship, and finishing details, ensuring issues are addressed before bulk.

6) Tech Pack Excellence and Print Accuracy

• Own the accuracy and completeness of tech packs, ensuring they are production ready and issued on time.
• Ensure all design details are accurate including design measurements, BOM, trims, artwork references, flat sketches, colour sketches, print placement and scale, and pantone colors.

7) Customer and Market Understanding Store and Competitor Insight

• Customer insight through store immersion and structured feedback: Conduct regular store visits and gather structured input from retail teams to understand customer demand and execution realities including colour differences, sizing feedback, and quality issues. Capture insights consistently and translate them into clear design actions, vendor briefs, and improvements for the next range build.
• Trading and competitor intelligence applied to range decisions: Partner with Buyers to review trading learnings such as top and bottom sellers, repeat purchases, and key fit or quality feedback, alongside competitor benchmarking on trend direction, print execution, quality, and price architecture. Apply these insights directly into seasonal themes, colour stories, print direction, and range building.