Can this royal favourite designer save Gap?
Fashion retail is a tough game, even for the uber-luxury brands that sell to recession-immune billionaires. But one growth area that continues to boom is stories about ailing brands and their serial attempts to resurrect themselves.
Take Gap, the 53-year-old brand, which not so long ago, 2021 to be precise, announced it was closing all its stores in Europe, to the muted soundtrack of tiny violins. Truth be told, even before this humiliating retreat, Gap had long ceased being an essential stop-over for pretty much anyone. While everyone likes the idea of bricks and mortar stores, not enough of us shop in them.
Its glory days as a trusted purveyor of well-made and designed utility clothes and flagwaver of democratic American design were long past. So too, the era (2002-2006) when it had staged fashion shows in London that European fashion editors flocked to because they knew that behind the scenes collaborators included Pierpaolo Piccioli and Maria Grazia Chiuri, then both working together at Valentino; Pierre Hardy, now at Hermès; Phoebe Philo (although she was never officially confirmed as a consultant) and Emma Hill, who went on to have huge success at Mulberry, was in charge of its accessories.
In fact, amidst all the boo-hoo-hooing, it could be said that Gap’s decision to pivot to an online model was a hard-nosed moment of common sense.
But now, a mere two and a bit years later, we’re meant to be drum rolling because it’s hired Zac Posen to be, wait for it, the executive vice president and creative director of Gap Inc. and the chief creative officer of Old Navy, Gap’s “little” sibling.
This is probably excellent news for Posen, a grafter of some talent. That talent however, is mainly for designing slightly camp red carpet dresses that tap into that old perennial – “Hollywood Glamour”. At the age of 20 he designed a dress for Naomi Campbell, composed of 36 separate pieces which, he told The New York Times back in February 2001 (doesn’t that seem a different era?), was so complicated, with open slits on the side of her body, so that they form triangles. His tutor at fashion school said to him that if he succeeded with it, it would be the hardest bias-cut dress ever made. Unfazed, Posen told The New York Times (which breathlessly titled its interview with him A Star is Born, “I think it will be almost impossible to make, but wait until you see it.”
That dress really did set him on a path to fashion stardom. A native New Yorker studying at London’s fabled Central St Martins school of fashion, he returned to the United States, setting up first in his parents’ living room. After his first catwalk show in New York in 2001, he was courted by fashion’s biggest business names – Yves Carcelle, the president of LVMH Fashion Group, Sidney Toledano, the CEO and director of Christian Dior S.A. and Domenico De Sole, the president and CEO of Gucci Group NV – and by some of the biggest names in entertainment of that time.
Natalie Portman, Rihanna, Amanda Seyfried, Claire Danes, Cameron Diaz, Jennifer Lopez, Mischa Barton, Beyoncé, Glenn Close, Reese Witherspoon, Naomi Watts and Rita Ora all wore him. A big, waspish personality, he became a favourite on Project Runway, the television show aimed at finding the next big designer (as if all the fashion weeks weren’t enough of a gateway) that was always far more popular in the US than its British counterpart was here.
Yet, like so many other industry darlings, he couldn’t turn the hype into a profitable business. And for some reason – perhaps his waspishness which some perceived as arrogance, or the way he appeared to achieve it all so early on – he became very much an un-darling, more of a punchline, a punchbag. “I got so tired of never having any money,” he says candidly on House of Z, an unexpectedly touching documentary from 2017 that charts his rise and fall. From being a lauded prodigy, he noted, it got to a point where “everyone hates Zac Posen. Fashion has a dark side”.
Like many designers, he suffered a major blow when Barney’s, the chi-chic department store hit the buffers, and in 2019, after designing Princess Eugenie’s second wedding dress that year – a faultlessly engineered champagne-coloured ultra flattering wasp waister with a cape back – he closed his business.
Which brings us to the current scenario: two bruised and chastened outcasts looking for The One who will revitalise their fortunes. Three, if you count Old Navy.
Posen, now 43, has some experience with the mass market, having designed a well-received collection for Target, the strong US chain in 2010, but that was very much aimed at the teen prom crowd. He’s not an obvious candidate to rescue a denim and T-shirt brand whose dwindling base consists of norm-core ‘moms’ and dads and toddlers. In the third quarter of 2023, net sales were down 15 per cent to $887 million compared to last year but the brand saw strength in women’s and babywear. But toddlers grow up fast and by the time they’re five and expressing a style opinion, they’ll be off, unless Posen can change their minds.
Gap has form working with the unexpected. Gap Yeezy, its collaboration with Kanye West, which launched in 2021 was initially hugely successful, partially propelled by Black Lives Matter and West’s global popularity. But West’s racist, misogynist ramblings soon made him a toxic figure. The partnership was terminated in 2022.
Clearly Posen’s fame is not on West’s scale but perhaps that’s a good thing, marking a return to product focus rather than hype. Get the fashion industry talking and wait for the trickle down. Posen’s appointment came from the top – the CEO Richard Dickson who recently joined Gap from Mattel where he has been credited with coming up with the Barbie movie idea. Could Dickson be banking on Posen bringing some joie de vivre to a brand that has become exceedingly drab?
Or maybe Posen’s gift for cut and fit, first displayed all those years ago in that 36 piece dress for Naomi Campbell, will come to play in the best basic jeans and T-shirts out there. Heaven knows there’s a lot of awful tat in this market as the old standards; Victoria’s Secret and Abercrombie & Fitch have been whittled by competition from Uniqlo, Boohoo, Shein and second hand market places such as Vinted.
Two big points in Posen’s favour: he’s not Kanye West and he is smart. His appointment has certainly spiked interest in Gap, however fleeting. Could he be the re-making of Gap and Old Navy, still two of the biggest apparel brands in the US? Could Gap and Old Navy be his rebirth? Together could they give us chic simple staples plus oomph? If so, wouldn’t that be nice?
