Apparel & Accessories Designer

Main Duties

DECATHLON international sport leader is known for being the largest sporting goods retailer in the world.

Nowadays, Decathlon is way more than that and is one of the most innovative and inclusive sports brand of the industry. The creative process at Decathlon comprises passion, inclusivity and team spirit, and this very same passion is at the heart of our innovations.We don’t content ourselves with mimicking what is already out there, but we really push ourselves to find that new solution, that idea, with eco-conception in mind, that’s going to change the customer’s or the sport-user’s experience to try something new.

Few numbers related to the creative crew =

530 > designers Worldwide in all specialties (sport, process, communication, retail, service…)

1 018 > people are part of a creative community (all the designers & designers leader, image leader, marketing & communication leaders) are part of a creative community (all the designers & designers leader, image leader, marketing & communication leaders)

13 > products designer countries : France, HongKong, Canada, Taiwan, Portugal, Turkey, Russia, India, Italy, Brazil, USA, Spain, China

7 > global events a year (2 Creative Directions, 1 Designer Day, 4 Creative All hands)

As a company born from sports , Decathlon is fully legitimate to be an actor of Sportswear, creating products that will dialog with sports, heritage and cultures.

DECATHLON is the one and only brand capable of bringing and merging SPORTS (Training, Wildlife, Skate, Outdoor…) + CULTURES together on the same playing field. In that way, we are designing collections inspired by specific sports cultures and collective memory, pieces reinventing codes and aesthetics of a practice. We aim to reinvent the notion of essentiality through desirability and accessibility. Comfort is at the center of our design, through softness, freedom of movement, and versatility. We also have the chance to explore our memories and almost 50 years of archives, to emphasize an emotional link with our concumers.

We are, in DECATHLON, the incubator that explores new playgrounds and way of working – inspiring new moves.

To reach this ambitious goal, we are building up the sportswear design team with future creative talents ( currently 7 designers in charge of apparel, accessories, footwear and CMF).

We open an internship contract, from 4 to 6 month.

The candidate will be in charge of assisting the design team on creating head-to-toe panoplies.

The responsibilities , under the supervision of the design director, would include :

• Focus on apparel, bags and accessories.
• For adult, men, women and unisex products.
• research and identify trends, ensuring the connection with internal creative directions.
• Design according to product brief
• Participate to designers brainstorm and creative sessions
• Illustrate proposals through 2D rapid sketches
• Deliver technical files to launch sampling and production.
• Work with sample room local team
• Build collaborative relationship with engineers and product manager
• Contribute to story telling and inspire communication team to enhance your creations.

The best fit candidate would have :

• Be agile / BE relevant / Be Creative
• Ability to multi-task
• good knowledge of garment construction, silhouettes, sewing techniques
• good knowledge of garment and trims
• good level of english.

What will the internship offer the student and what will they learn while they are with you? E.g. skills they could learn/develop and experience they could gain.

• The culture of one of the biggest sport leader in the world
• The opportunity to meet with a very wide diversity of sports practices
• The meet with very high qualified teams in multiples industrial processes like woven, knit, technical membranes, assembly methods, digitalisation etc…
• Experiencing creativity on textile, accessories, bags and footwear
• Opportunity to work in dedicated maker labs (textile, footwear, bags, hard…)
• The connection with a more than 500 designers community
• The student will be supervised by the design director and senior director
• Discovery of professional environment mindset and exigences.
• In their role, the student will ave the opportunity to stage their product and story telling within a dedicated transforming space.
• Discovery of Lille, a typical french city, easy to live in, and quite representative to the french culture