This is Connecting the Dots, a series in which writer José Criales-Unzueta looks at how fashion, pop culture, the internet and society are all interconnected.
Zac Posen dressed Anne Hathaway in a custom look last week at a Bulgari event in Rome. Nothing unusual about that, except, Hathaway’s look was not one of Posen’s signature couture-esque evening fabrications, but a white cotton shirtdress from Gap. Which makes sense, seeing as earlier this year, Posen took up a new gig at the American retailer. The designer is now chief creative officer of Old Navy, and creative director of Gap Inc.
What made this particular hire fascinating is that Posen was never really a name associated with the most democratic of fashions. He is known in the industry for being a noughties wunderkind, with an impressive technical hand for eveningwear. And while he’s previously gained experience in this space — he was the creative director of Brooks Brothers from 2014 to 2020 — his eponymous label was never a commercial heavy hitter. (He announced its closure in 2019.)
Still, what Posen is known for outside of this bubble is being a charming designer who never did a celebrity wrong when it came to dressing them for an event. Chalk this up, in part, to his time as a judge on Project Runway (2012-2016), which helped to make him a US household name. This public image is something that Gap is presumably looking to leverage as he gets started at the brand.
Gap Inc is currently navigating a turn around. Prior to hiring Richard Dickson as CEO last July (previously COO of Mattel) following a year-long search, the Gap brand had reported a sales decline of 13 per cent in 2021 versus 2019. It’s also worth remembering that this isn’t the company’s first dabble into tapping the power of celebrity. The retailer had launched Yeezy Gap, a partnership with Ye, in 2020 for what was supposed to be a 10-year-long contract. The buzzy collaboration ended in 2022 after the relationship turned sour — the rapper made claims against Gap that the brand had breached their agreement. Needless to say that the mash-up, popular as it might have been — particularly in its last iteration “engineered” by Balenciaga’s Demna with its black-out face coverings, Demna-esque pointed shoulders and trash bag-like fabrics (plus a few dumpster-filled pop-ups) — failed to turn Gap around.
Stick to what you know
There is no question of Posen’s skill as a designer, nor of his creativity. Still, Gap Inc is a big ship to steer (this is a good time to disclose that I was an intern at Banana Republic back in my design student days). What Posen has to prove now is not only that he has the commercial chops to bring it back to its glory days, but that he can get people to care about a brand that’s lost some of its cultural cache. His task is also to bring novelty to the brands without turning off their existing customers. Can he be something for everyone while being everything to someone?
In a way, his appointment is reminiscent of Jenna Lyons’s time as creative director at J Crew. By the time Lyons left the company in 2017, she had been promoted to president and had the trust of a massive customer base. It’s as if Gap Inc was looking for its own Lyons, where Posen has won half the battle already in that the people who care about who is designing their clothes recognise him as a skilled designer. What’s left is to get them to form an attachment to Gap once more, while keeping the engagement of the casual customer who goes to the brand for what it’s always been known for: a good basic for a great price.
Posen’s chosen Trojan horse seems to be a celebrity-filled one. This is what people know him for, and it’s also what people expect from him. The dress that he designed for Hathaway was much discussed online, as was his custom Gap Met Gala denim look for Da’Vine Joy Randolph (Posen wore a Banana Republic suit). Both are current celebrity darlings; the latter, a recent Oscar winner who made headlines for her looks on the awards circuit this year and the former, a bonafide movie star who recently underwent a “fashion renaissance”. After the first images of Hathaway’s look surfaced online, Posen took to Instagram to announce that the shirtdress (not the corset underpinning it) would be available for pre-order soon.
Bridging the Gap
On Tuesday morning, the dress was made available online for $158, slightly pricier than the average Gap cotton dress retailing for around $90, and sold out after just a couple of hours. That it was labelled online as “Poplin Shirtdress Created by Zac Posen” speaks to this name-recognition strategy (one can assume that, as creative director overlooking all products, he won’t be signing every single piece). I reached out to Gap to inquire about the amount of units made available, to which they replied that they “released limited quantities”. Just how limited is up to us to speculate, but, in a way, the play worked. Posen made people look and shop, regardless of how few or many of them there may be.
The jury is out on how sustainable this strategy is in the long run. Though I tend to believe this is no more than Gap and Posen getting their feet wet in a way that feels most safe. This is a top-level strategy that, as of now, seems too straightforward to fail. What’s left to see is whether or not Posen and Gap Inc can translate clout into interest and interest into loyalty. They’ve made us talk and have piqued our interest, now let’s see what they do to keep it.
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