With the launch of GapStudio, Gap wants you to rethink everything you know about the brand

Over the last year, Gap has been popping up in an unexpected place for a heritage casual wear brand: the red carpet. Last July, Anne Hathaway wore a white shirt dress with matching bralette and Bulgari jewelry. In December, Demi Moore appeared in a black knit jersey dress and moto jacket. And just this past February, Timothée Chalamet showed up in a black satin workwear set.

Zac Posen, Gap Inc.’s executive vice president and creative director, had designed all of them under the new label, GapStudio. And now, Gap is bringing GapStudio to the masses as it officially launches the new, higher-end Gap sub-brand, designed to elevate Gap’s perception, extend its reach to younger consumers, and help regain its cultural caché.

GapStudio will launch four seasonal collections a year, along with select standalone drops starting with this Spring capsule, called GapStudioCollection 01. The collection includes a range of elevated basics that play into classic styles Gap is known for, but with contemporary and trend-driven silhouettes, and elevated fabrications and construction. Prices range from $78-$248, and will be available online and in select stores starting this Thursday. 

Posen’s role is far-reaching across Gap Inc, but GapStudio seems to be the most direct expression of his crossover from the red carpet gowns of his former high-end designer label to Gap Inc’s accessible everyday denim. Posen led the collection’s design processes, creative directed its launch campaign with zeitgeisty photographers, models, and stylists from his network, and onboarded a team he’s worked with for decades to bring it to life.

The move to revive a brand’s Americana cool factor

GapStudio is launching close to a year after Posen joined Gap Inc, where he oversees the creative direction of its brands, including Gap, Banana Republic, Athleta, and Old Navy, for which he is also chief creative officer. He and his team work out of the GapStudio atelier (that’s fashion for workshop), a new space in Gap Inc’s New York City headquarters that’s the epicenter of a new design vision for Gap.

After shuttering his namesake brand in 2019 and spending seven years at Brooks Brothers, Gap Inc hired Posen to revive the defunct heritage brand known more for its deep sales than for its fit. According to the company’s fourth quarter earnings report, net sales were down 3% in its last quarter compared to the previous year. But the full 2024 fiscal year shows that online sales were up 4% and net sales were up 1%. In-store sales remained flat. 

Posen’s first collection for GapStudio offers up a tangible sense of where he wants to take the brand. The collection includes a mix of polished but contemporary everyday pieces, including denim sailor pants, cropped white button downs, and dresses (the Anne Hathaway will be available in a new color), ribbed tanks and dresses, slinky slip dresses, a denim moto and a trench coat with a pleated back. “You have to have that range within a very tight collection to be able to do that,” says Posen of the mix between casual and elevated styles. He notes that the slip dress could be worn with shoes or heels. “Daystomper, night stalker.”  

Brand elevation through construction, silhouette, and association

Posen applied a studied eye to the construction of the pieces. He showed me the collection in the Gap Inc showroom in NYC’s Tribeca neighborhood. I noted the curved seaming of the knit dress worn by Demi Moore, which gave the dress a slight bell shape. Those were Posen’s “construction lines,” he said, so the piece didn’t have side seams. The seams themselves were made to have more dimension than a typical needle stitch, he pointed out. As he made his way through the collection racks, he pointed out more details: the $148 knit day dress, which is a fully fashioned knit, the dry hand of the rib tank, the sit of the shoulder and pick stitch of the khaki blazer. 

Posen pulls out a white denim corset cincher. “Like, why not?” he asks. He paired it with a white tank dress, but it appears in a few different looks throughout the campaign, making the case for its versatility. The collection also has sweatshirts for when you’re not in the mood to be so cinched. He thumbs to the slip dress, which has seaming he originally designed for a slip dress featured in a ballet his husband choreographed. “Pajama glamour,” he declared. “Everyday street glamour. Red carpet to the street.”

That sentiment covers the range of the collection pretty well. “That’s so cute as a look, and really young,” Posen says referring to the sweatshirt look. There’s an explicit play for Gen Z with GapStudio. “It’s been really fun to be building a collection with that in mind, in terms of expanding our customer base.”

One way he did that, in addition to leaning into nascent Gen Z trends like bloomers, is through the GapStudio campaign itself. He tapped fashion photographer Mario Sorrenti, stylist Alastair McKimm, and supermodels Alex Consani, Imaan Hammam, and Anok Yai. He described the process of building the images as “elevating the iconic.” He hopes to tap into contemporary equivalents of the brand’s past partnerships with renowned photographers like Annie Leibowitz and Steven Miesel. 

GapStudio’s “elevated essentials”

Ultimately, Posen wants GapStudio to communicate a sense of “elevated essentials,” he says. “Great items that become staples in a wardrobe. Beloved pieces you always look for. Things that have style and trends without being disposable.” To do that, he aims to balance Gap’s metrics-driven approach with his own taste. “Experimentation at any level is essential,” he says.

And it does appear that he is deeply involved with the GapStudio design team, including concepting, fitting, and fabrication. As we walked to the atelier down the hall from the showroom, he introduced me to team members he’d worked with for 10, 15, and 20 years, who now work in the GapStudio label.

As we talked and made our way through the atelier, he was distracted by the work of a designer who was draping and pinning a work-in-progress garment on a figure. “I keep thinking about lowering the back on it,” Posen said to the designer. “You have to do a body suit—that’s what I said at like midnight last night—but then we can go lower in the back and lower on the side.” He’s comfortably in his element. I asked him what the piece was for. “That’s a special project,” he told me as we moved to the next station, without disclosing particulars. 

Posen plans to invite other guest designers, a strategy that has worked well for bridge and mass market brands like Uniqlo and H&M. He sees the coalescence of longstanding relationships and skillsets into GapStudio as “a starting point for innovation”; a new chapter with old collaborators. The play is “desirability, absolutely elevation,” Posen says of GapStudio. The first collection, he says, is “just the beginning.”