Director Design Women's, Tops, Skirts, Dresses

Gap Inc.; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 80,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

An established industry player seeks a visionary design leader to inspire and direct a talented team in creating sustainable products that resonate with customers. This role involves leading the product design process, fostering collaboration across departments, and ensuring the seamless execution of design concepts from inception to store. The ideal candidate will possess a keen sense of style, strong leadership skills, and the ability to thrive in a fast-paced environment. Join a dynamic team where your creativity and strategic vision will shape the future of fashion and enhance customer experiences.

Qualifications

• Proven ability to lead and develop high-performing design teams.
• Strong understanding of garment construction and product development.

Responsibilities

• Lead the product design process and manage a creative design team.
• Research trends and develop design vision for product areas.

Skills

Team Leadership

Creative Direction

Trend Research

Collaboration

Problem Solving

Education

Bachelor's Degree in Design or related field

Tools

Adobe Illustrator

Microsoft Excel

Job description

About the Role

In this role, you will work in an energizing, inclusive, and creative environment focused on concepting and creating sustainable product that exceeds customers' expectations. Your goal is to partner with cross functional team members who collectively are responsible for ensuring that the product style, fit, and quality are more than worth the price for our customers. You will manage and direct a creative design team that is responsible for setting the overall global design direction for the product line. Must lean into risk taking and be customer curious!

What You'll Do

• Lead team through all aspects of the product design process, providing creative direction, coaching, and developing a motivated, high performing team.

• Research global markets in order to identify new seasonal trends, silhouettes, fabrics, techniques, product categories and competitive inspiration

• Develop overall design vision and concept for product area, advocating and presenting strategies to internal leadership and cross functional partners

• Develop strong internal cross functional relationships with Merchandising, Production, Technical design, Gap Inc Sourcing (GIS), Visual Merchandising and Marketing to ensure product concept to store and site execution is a seamless customer experience.

• Partner with Production and Tech Design to create tech packs and communicate vision behind fit and product design, ensuring execution, quality, and desired margin targets are achieved.

• Collaborate and lead others in key design initiatives and their implementation

• Responsible for planning, budget, and end results; set policies and strategic direction for design team.

Who You Are

• Ability to work in a fast paced, dynamic, and highly collaborative environment, with the ability to juggle multiple seasons at one time and track development deadlines

• Ability to lead, influence and develop a high performing team of designers.

• Possess an elevated sense of style, aesthetic, and color and understand how to translate trends through the lens of the customer and brand filter

• Strong computer knowledge including Adobe Illustrator and Microsoft Excel

• Able to filter, prioritize, analyze, and validate potentially complex in-depth understanding of concepts and procedures throughout the product creation process related to garment construction, hand sketching, and fabric, and understanding of procedures and concepts in other areas, such as merchandising, product development, mills and vendors.