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From the 80s through to the early noughties it was the go-to high street store for casual hoodies and jeans, before falling out of favour. Now almost 30 years after its heyday, Gap is hoping to turn things around. Key to its comeback strategy? A pivot to more premium fashion.
On Thursday the retailer will unveil a collection with the luxury fashion designer Victoria Beckham. The collaboration is the next step in the luxification of Gap being led by Richard Dickson, who joined Gap Inc as its president and chief executive from Mattel, the US toymaker, in 2023.
The 38-piece collection includes a range of Gap classics including denim, shirting and outerwear reimagined through Beckham’s more design-led lens.
Priced from £25 to £250, high demand is expected for pieces that are rooted in Beckham’s own wardrobe and regularly seen on her Paris fashion week catwalk – including a tailored denim jacket and a white T-shirt. In her mainline collection, a similar jean jacket costs £590 while T-shirts start from £95.
The collection also features capri pants, a nod to the style popularised by Sarah Jessica Parker in a 2004 Gap advert. It also includes a navy hoodie that features all the hallmarks of the 90s staple including kangaroo pocket and drawstrings – but this time around Gap’s signature arch logo with its Spire regular font sits above Beckham’s own branding.
“To me, Gap is an all-American icon – a brand that has always created timeless pieces for everybody’s wardrobe, with a sharp attention to detail,” said Beckham in a statement. “Bringing my design perspective to those everyday essentials and working with a team that shares that same commitment to craftsmanship and execution has made this collaboration incredibly special.”
The collection follows Gap’s previous collaborations with smaller, emerging brands including the LA label Cult Gaia. Last year, the brand also introduced a new premier line, GapStudio collection, that is overseen by Zac Posen, the US designer who previously dressed Rihanna and Michelle Obama and showed during New York fashion week.
The partnership with Beckham cements the idea that Gap is shifting from mass fashion to a more selective shopper.
While the luxury fashion market navigates a global slowdown, the high street is also facing its own set of pressures amid rising costs and low consumer confidence.
“The traditional hierarchy between luxury and high street fashion has started to disappear” says Catherine Shuttleworth, a retail consultant and chief executive of Savvy Marketing. “Collaborations are no longer just marketing stunts, they are strategic platforms for growth.”
Gap is hoping to bolster appeal to the squeezed middle consumer who is price conscious but doesn’t want to shop from ultra low cost fast fashion brands. Tapping into a growing “affordable aspiration” market, Gap is intending to entice a shopper who expects high quality and design from mid-tier brands alongside products that make them feel special. It’s an approach already executed by its competitors including Uniqlo, which has partnered with JW Anderson since 2017, and Cos, which shows an “atelier collection” at New York fashion week.
For Louise Déglise-Favre, a lead apparel analyst at GlobalData, the collection signals that Gap is “is serious about product, cut and styling, not only basics and price”. However, she cautions it is not easy to sustain. “It will require consistency in design quality and a clear message that GapStudio is a design focused expression of the brand, while the core Gap offer remains strong basics,” she says. “That is not necessarily mixed messaging if it is positioned as a premium capsule within an accessible brand, and if the product and pricing support that story.”
Dickson, who was a leading architect of the 2023 Barbie phenomenon, successfully revitalising the franchise, is similarly now focused on bringing Gap back into the wider cultural conversation. So far there have been viral adverts with the girl group Katseye and the actor Parker Posey. GapStudio has also been worn by celebrities including Anne Hathaway and Timothée Chalamet on the red carpet.
It’s a strategy that seems to be starting to pay off. After closing all 81 of its stores in the UK and Ireland in 2021, seven have now reopened. Gap Inc, which encompasses brands including Gap and Old Navy, swung from losses in 2022 to a net income of $844m in the fiscal year 2024. According to financial results for its fourth quarter, Gap was a key driver with net sales of $1.1bn, up 8% compared with a year earlier while full year net sales of $3.5bn were up 5% compared with last year.
While Beckham previously worked with Mango on a successful one-off collection in 2024, the Gap partnership appears more long-term. Described as “multi-season”, a second collection is planned for the autumn. It also taps into Beckham’s own network, allowing Gap access to creatives typically outside its reach. The campaign is shot by Mert Alaş and Marcus Piggott, a photography duo who famously shot her and David in underwear for Emporio Armani, and it stars the models Mica Argañaraz and Lina Zhang, more typically found on the Chanel and Saint Laurent catwalks.
Shuttleworth says the collaboration between Beckham and Gap has come at the right time for both. “For Beckham it allows accessibility of her high-end brand to younger shoppers and for Gap it creates useful news and generates interest and reappraisal of the brand offering.”
However she warns that for Gap, its ultimate recovery will be defined by “whether it can consistently deliver the kind of product customers want to come back for”.
English (US)