Requirements
Candidates must possess a strong background in print design and a deep understanding of fashion, garment construction, and trend analysis. Exceptional communication and influencing skills are required to manage stakeholders across two major business locations.
Job Description
Working Pattern: Typically 5 days in the office, with core hours flexible between 8am-6pm.
Location: Split site role between NEXT HQ (Leicestershire) and Laura Ashley Head Office (London)
Work Type: On-site / Hybrid flex based on business needs
The Role
This is a unique, high impact strategic role designed to bridge the gap between two iconic brands. As our Brand & Trend Product Lead, you will act as the crucial link between NEXT HQ in Leicester and the Laura Ashley head office in London.
Working closely with our Womenswear Non-Clothing (WWR NC) and Kidswear teams in London, your mission is to elevate and modernise the Laura Ashley brand direction while respecting its rich archive. You will bring a high fashion, catwalk aware perspective to heritage designs, ensuring print and product concepts translate seamlessly into commercially viable, contemporary fashion.
By collaborating directly with internal design teams, Laura Ashley contacts, and NEXT Buying teams, you will act as a key brand contact from initial concept right through to sign off, taking Laura Ashley to a whole new level.
What You’ll Take On
- Drive Trend & Creative Direction: Translate global catwalk, high fashion, and modern street style trends into relevant, commercial design directions for Laura Ashley fashion and textiles.
- Act as the Strategic Liaison: Serve as the core go between across NEXT (Womenswear NC & Kidswear) and Laura Ashley teams in London to champion new concepts and secure cross brand alignment.
- Archive Curation & Evolution: Dive into Laura Ashley’s extensive heritage archive to extract classic prints and reimagine them for modern garment applications and broader product categories.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Partner directly with Buying and Design teams from the very start of the product journey, providing touchpoints, guidance, and creative sign offs.
- Flexible Dual Office Working: Flex your time and presence between NEXT HQ and Laura Ashley’s London offices based on project demand and critical design milestones.
What You’ll Bring
- Print & Fashion Expertise: A strong background in print design paired with an exceptional eye for fashion, garment construction, and how print translates onto modern clothing silhouettes.
- Trend & Catwalk Knowledge: A proven track record of analysing trends and translating high level catwalk concepts into commercially successful high street product ranges.
- Influencing & Relationship Skills: Exceptional communication and diplomacy skills, with the confidence to influence, inspire, and bring diverse teams along on a bold creative journey.
- Heritage Brand Experience: Respect for brand heritage combined with the commercial drive to push a brand past its comfort zone into new product areas.
- Adaptability & Drive: The ability to manage stakeholders across two major businesses, balance competing priorities, and work flexibly between different locations.
Digital Portfolio Guidance
While this isn’t strictly a hands on design role, having a strong print design background is essential to succeed in this position. To help us get a feel for your eye for design and creative vision, please attach a digital portfolio to your application.
To help you put your best foot forward, here are a few top tips on what makes a portfolio stand out to our team:
- Print & Pattern Direction: Work that demonstrates a sharp eye for the future of print, catwalk trends, and how heritage patterns can be evolved for modern womenswear, non-clothing, and kidswear.
- Commercial Viability: Examples showing how trend insights and print concepts translate directly into commercial, wearable fashion products for NEXT and Laura Ashley.
- Visual Storytelling & CADs: Visuals that showcase your print application, colour palettes, moodboards, and CAD work to illustrate how prints work on finished garments.
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.
#LI-Onsite
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!
- 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