Director of Visual Merchandising

About the RoleWe are delighted to be representing a luxury brand to recruit a Visual Merchandising Director to bring the brands global visual merchandising vision to life across international markets.The Visual Merchandising Director will define and lead the brands global visual merchandising vision, ensuring that the brands heritage, craftsmanship and creative codes are expressed consistently and compellingly across every retail touchpoint. The role is responsible for bringing the brand strategy to life in the retail experience, along with annual campaign launches.The Visual Merchandising Director will align global and regional teams, shape investment priorities, establish standards and governance, and lead the development of scalable concepts, tools and capabilities. The role will use customer, market and performance insight to continually evolve the brands approach and deliver distinctive luxury experiences across international markets.Key Responsibilities Set the global vision: Translate the brand strategy into a clearly defined long-term visual merchandising strategy and creative principles across boutiques, counters, wholesale doors, pop-ups and other physical retail environments.Own creative direction for retail: Lead the development and approval of global display concepts, planograms, launch animations, campaign executions, merchandising solutions and retail storytelling. Publishing VM toolkits for every campaign for market adoption.Protect brand consistency: Establish global standards, governance and approval processes that safeguard the brand’s identity while allowing appropriate market adaptation.Translate business priorities: Partner with senior leaders across Creative, Marketing, Product, Retail and Commercial teams to turn brand and growth priorities into a coherent global merchandising roadmap.Lead annual and seasonal planning: Set priorities, scope and phasing for the global VM calendar, ensuring resources and investment are focused on the highest-impact initiatives.Drive commercial effectiveness: Define success measures, review performance and customer insight, and use findings to strengthen visibility, storytelling, conversion and productivity.Direct budgets and partners: Own the global VM budget and provide strategic oversight of agencies, designers, manufacturers and production partners, ensuring quality, value and responsible delivery.Guide international execution: Build strong relationships with regional and local teams, resolve strategic execution challenges and maintain a clear feedback loop between markets and the global function.Champion innovation and sustainability: Identify emerging retail, material and production opportunities and embed more responsible, efficient and scalable practices in concept development and rollout.Build capability: Lead, coach and develop the visual merchandising team, including the Visual Merchandising Manager, and strengthen VM knowledge and ways of working across regional teams.Provide executive visibility: Present strategies, concepts, investment recommendations and performance updates to senior stakeholders with clarity and influence.Skills/Experience Significant senior-level experience in visual merchandising, retail design or store design within a luxury or premium brand; beauty or fragrance experience is advantageous.A strong portfolio demonstrating global creative leadership, sophisticated retail concepts and consistent execution across multiple formats and markets.Proven experience setting strategy, leading complex international programmes and influencing senior cross-functional stakeholders.Strong commercial acumen, including ownership of substantial budgets and the ability to translate data and customer insight into strategic action.Demonstrated success leading teams and managing agencies, designers, manufacturers and production partners.Expert understanding of luxury retail environments, materials, production processes, fixtures, planograms and installation requirements.Working knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite and relevant 3D/CAD tools such as SketchUp, AutoCAD or Vectorworks, with advanced PowerPoint and Excel capability.Excellent communication, presentation, negotiation and stakeholder-management skills; able to operate confidently across cultures and organisational levels.Comfortable working at pace, managing ambiguity and maintaining exceptional standards of detail and finish.Willingness to travel internationally as required.Personal Attributes A strategic and imaginative leader with refined luxury sensibility.Strong conceptual and aesthetic foundation to support impeccable deliveryCommercially minded, insight-led and focused on measurable impact.Decisive and collaborative, with the judgement to balance global consistency and local relevance.A compelling communicator who inspires confidence and brings teams with them.Meticulous about craft, quality and the customer experience.