Senior Handbags & Accessories Designer in Hardwick

As Senior Handbags & Accessories Designer, you'll play a key role in creating collections of handbags and accessories that reflect our affordable luxury positioning, bringing fresh ideas to life from concept through to customer delivery. Working closely with our Creative Director and Lead Designers, you'll take ownership of product development across handbags and accessories, ensuring designs are innovative, on-brand, and commercially aligned. From concept sketches to technical specifications, factory liaison to packaging and POS, you'll oversee the full process, inspiring your team, mentoring junior designers, and setting the benchmark for design quality. This is a role for a hands-on creative who thrives on detail and responsibility. You'll balance trend awareness with brand heritage, ensuring handbags and accessories are delivered on time, to budget, and to the highest standards. You'll also bring fresh thinking to processes, driving innovation in both design and personalisation, and playing a central role in keeping Katie Loxton at the forefront of handbags and fashion accessories.

The role is Monday - Friday 9am-5pm. You'll enjoy the exciting buzz of our friendly office in Banbury, Oxfordshire three times a week on average with the flexibility to work from home for the remaining two days. This may increase to 5 days a week during peak periods such as sign off weeks.

• Design innovative, on-brand products that are visually compelling and commercially successful.
• Own projects from concept to delivery, including specifications, sampling, packaging, testing, and final sign-off.
• Liaise directly with factories and suppliers to ensure product quality, consistency, and timely delivery.
• Collaborate with Buying and Merchandising to ensure designs hit target costings and align with pricing strategy.
• Mentor and support mid-weight and junior designers, setting high standards of accuracy, organisation, and creativity.
• Check and sign off design specifications and samples, ensuring 'first-time-right' quality across the team.
• Present concepts and development progress to Creative Directors and Lead Designers throughout the season.
• Maintain up-to-date competitor and trend awareness, sharing insights with the team.
• Drive innovation in product personalisation, developing new ideas and ensuring successful implementation.
• Build and refine design processes to improve efficiency and team output.
• Produce daily/weekly progress reports to Lead Designers, ensuring clear communication on live projects.
• Partner cross-functionally with Buying, Design, Merchandising, Ecommerce, and Logistics on product-related projects.

• Degree in fashion or product design (or equivalent experience) with a focus on fashion and lifestyle products is highly desirable.
• 2-3 years' experience in mid-weight or above in product design, preferably within fashion and accessories brand, with proven ability to deliver designs from creative concept to final product.
• A proven track record of managing processes and ideally people to effectively deliver high-quality products within deadlines.
• Strong visual communication skills as well as excellent proficiency in Creative suite such as Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.
• Advanced knowledge of Microsoft Office suite such as Excel, Word and Outlook.
• Ability to demonstrate an exceptional level of accuracy in both written correspondence and numeracy.
• Experience of working in a fast-paced, pressurised environment and a high degree of confidentiality and integrity.
• Able to work pro-actively within a team coupled with the ability to take initiative and work autonomously.
• A positive, can-do attitude and excellent team working skills.
• Proven experience working independently under general instructions on a large variety of special projects.

We are always striving to improve our way of working to be more inclusive, diverse and equal, including encouraging all team members to bring their ideas to the table as we know this is key to our continued success.

• A competitive salary.
• 33 days holiday including bank holidays rising to 35 with length of service.
• A broad benefits package including our staff favourite - a very generous staff discount across both our brands. See all of our benefits on our careers portal.
• Opportunities to make an impact as well as learn and develop further.
• An innovative and friendly workplace with a team we're proud to be part of. Find out more about us and our culture on our careers portal.