Urban Outfitters Design Director - Womens

Role Summary

Urban Outfitters is looking for a Womenswear Design Director to lead the lifestyle vision across women's soft wovens categories including skirts, dresses, shirting, jackets, utility, and related lifestyle product.  This role is responsible for defining how silhouette, wash, fabric, proportion, construction, styling, and outfitting come together to create a compelling and recognizable point of view for the UO customer with a femme point of view.

 

The Design Director will own the seasonal creative and product strategy for the category, translating overarching UO concepts into a forward, differentiated assortment that balances denim authority, key items and franchises, outfitting, commercial opportunity, and fashion newness. This leader should have a strong fashion point of view and the ability to turn cultural, vintage, global, and fashion inspiration into product that feels uniquely Urban Outfitters.  Equally important is the ability to lead and develop a high-performing team, influence cross-functional partners, and connect creative vision to meaningful business growth.

 

The ideal candidate is a product-obsessed, culturally curious, forward-thinking creative leader who can move fluidly between big-picture brand vision and the details that make an individual garment great.

Role Responsibilities

• Define and drive the seasonal creative and product strategy across soft wovens and casual knits categories, translating UO concepts into a distinctive BDG point of view and cohesive lifestyle assortment.
• Build the Assortment Strategy: Establish the seasonal roadmap across key items, franchises, and fashion newness, ensuring clear assortment architecture, outfitting, hierarchy, and differentiation.
• Drive Evolution: Establish a forward point of view on silhouette, proportion, wash, fabric, construction, finish, and styling. Protect and evolve successful fits and franchises while identifying and developing the ideas that can become the next meaningful businesses.
• Partner with Product Development, R&D, Sourcing, and Production to build a raw-material strategy that delivers the creative vision while balancing quality, cost, margin, and scalability.
• Set the Product Standard: Guide and approve product from concept through development, fittings, sample reviews, and Finalization. Maintain a high bar for taste, fit, proportion, wash, fabrication, construction, detail, quality, and finish, and ensure the team has the technical direction needed to achieve it.
• Identify What’s Next: Maintain a deep understanding of the UO customer and actively research vintage, global culture, runway, street style, emerging designers and brands, youth culture, and broader shifts in how the customer is getting dressed. Translate those insights into forward product opportunities rather than simply following the competitive market.
• Connect Creativity + Business: Use selling, Velo metrics, rankings, customer response, and market intelligence to identify whitespace, opportunities, risks, and emerging franchises. Partner with Merchant leadership to determine where to protect, evolve, chase, test, scale, or exit, while maintaining a forward creative perspective.
• Lead Cross-Category Outfitting: Partner with Design Directors and creative leaders across UO Women’s to connect the broader seasonal expression, ensuring products create strong outfitting opportunities and work cohesively across categories.
• Lead + Develop the Team: Build, inspire, and develop a high-performing Design team with clear expectations around creative vision, taste, curiosity, technical excellence, ownership, and accountability. Provide decisive product direction and meaningful coaching while developing future leaders and strengthening the overall capability of the team.
• Influence + Drive Alignment: Serve as the senior Design voice, presenting seasonal strategy and product direction to leadership with clarity and conviction. Build strong partnerships across Buying, Product Development, Production, R&D, Sourcing, Print + Color, and Concept to drive timely decisions and maintain creative intent through execution.
• Drive Operational Excellence: Own seasonal priorities, calendars, resources, and budgets for the team. Anticipate development and execution risks, proactively solve problems, and identify opportunities to simplify processes and focus resources against the highest-impact product and business opportunities.

Role Qualifications

• 10–12+ years of progressive apparel design experience and demonstrated leadership of substantial product categories and Design teams.
• Exceptional connection to the Urban Outfitters customer, with strong knowledge of youth culture, fashion, vintage, global culture, emerging brands, runway, street style, and relevant cultural shifts.
• Exceptional taste, product instinct, and creative vision, demonstrated through a strong portfolio and a track record of building differentiated, culturally relevant, commercially successful product.
• Deep expertise in design and development, including silhouette, fit, proportion, wash, construction, fabrication, finishing, and the nuances required to build and evolve successful collection driven product.
• Strong technical knowledge of soft wovens and related lifestyle categories, with the ability to direct both creative development and technical execution.
• Advanced knowledge of wash and dye techniques, garment treatments, trims, stitching, construction, finishing, and manufacturing processes, with enough technical depth to lead wash and raw-material direction and effectively challenge and guide Design, Product Development, mills, laundries, and vendors.
• Strong understanding of fabric behavior, quality, hand feel, drape, wash, and how raw materials impact fit and silhouette, with the ability to identify materials and techniques that can unlock new product and franchise opportunities.
• Demonstrated ability to forecast product and trend evolution, identify whitespace, and translate broad cultural and customer insights into actionable product strategies through a distinct brand lens.
• Strong business acumen with the ability to connect creative vision, assortment architecture, customer insight, and financial performance and use selling data to make informed forward decisions.
• Proven ability to lead, inspire, coach, and develop high-performing creative teams, including setting clear expectations, raising the product standard, identifying talent needs, and developing future leaders.
• Strong executive presence and communication skills, with the ability to articulate a clear point of view, influence senior leadership, navigate differing perspectives, and drive decisions with confidence and conviction.
• Highly collaborative, decisive, and solution-oriented, with demonstrated success building strong partnerships across Design, Buying, Product Development, R&D, Sourcing, Production, Print + Color, and other creative functions.
• Strong hand and digital design skills with the technical expertise to independently lead seasonal set-ups, fittings, wash reviews, product reviews, and leadership presentations.
• Strong understanding of AI and emerging creative technology, with the ability to use tools such as Midjourney, PromeAI, and ChatGPT to accelerate research, ideation, visualization, and creative storytelling.
• Highly organized and self-directed, with the ability to anticipate change, prioritize resources, navigate ambiguity, and maintain creative excellence in a fast-paced product environment.

The Perks

URBN offers comprehensive Perks & Benefits to employees. Availability and eligibility to specific benefits may be subject to your location and employment status. Benefits include medical, dental, vision, PTO, generous employee discounts, retirement savings and much more! For additional information visit www.urbn.com/work-with-us/benefits

EEO Statement

URBN celebrates diversity and is committed to creating an inclusive environment for all employees. We are proud to provide equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, sex (including gender, pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity or expression), religion, creed, age, physical or mental disability, national origin or ancestry, ethnicity, citizenship, service in the uniformed services, genetic information, or any other protected characteristic as established by law. We believe strongly in fostering a safe, fair and respectful work environment. To ensure compliance with our non-discrimination and anti-harassment policies, we offer anti-harassment training to managers and employees.