BASIC INSTINCT
TO PUSH A CLASSIC AMERICAN LABEL FORWARD, GAP, S SCANDINAVIAN CREATIVE DIRECTOR REBEKKA BAY IS GETTING BACK TO THE ESSENTIALS. PATRICIA LEE REPORTS FROM NEW YORK.
Gap’s creative director Rebekka Bay gets back to the essentials.
Before American Apparel or J. Crew, there was Gap: an American institution with the sharpest staples and the coolest ads. Who else can claim to have kick-started the swing music renaissance in the late ’90s with a commercial for uniform pants? (The 31-second-long television ad featured dancers clad in Gap khakis doing the Lindy Hop.) Or convinced Sarah Jessica Parker and Lenny Kravitz to jam together for another ad to boost sales of its boot-cut jeans and sweaters?
Unfortunately, success breeds copycats and, in recent years, the brand has struggled to keep one step ahead of the competition. A classic hot-to-not case study, the company has been late to lucrative trends like premium jeans and too hasty in changing its design strategy. One season, executives were told to chase the club kids with trendy party looks and the next, to go after the career woman with sleek workwear. Until now. Less than a year into her tenure, new creative director Rebekka Bay has brought the eyeballs back to the label.
Her first holiday season campaign featuring Sikh designer Waris Ahluwalia with filmmaker Quentin Jones hit the headlines last November when a photo of it defaced with racist graffiti in a Bronx subway raised a furore on Twitter. The brand responded with a silent but significant gesture that reflected at once its stand on diversity and Bay’s innate understanding of the millennial generation: It made Ahluwalia’s image the wallpaper of its Twitter account.
Bay has been equally bold and effective in her choice of collaborators. Last December, she unveiled a collection of T-shirts produced by limited edition fashion and art magazine Visionaire. The partnership gave Gap instant access to
Visionaire’s network of rock star contributors. The T-shirts read like a hit list of coveted artworks, including a portrait of Lady Gaga by Dutch photography duo Inez and Vinoodh, and a graphic block pattern with the words “Grow with love”, scrawled by Yoko Ono.
When I meet Bay last October for a preview of her debut collection – well before the launch of the campaign and collaboration – however, I know her merely as the brains behind the success of Swedish minimalist label Cos. She’s dressed in the pared-down staples that every other designer today seems to favour: crisp white shirt, dark denim jeans and New Balance trainers. Her face appears makeup free and her hair is pulled back into a casual ponytail. What differentiates her is her unassuming manner and attentiveness.
In an age rife with prefab fashion houses and creative directors curtailed by boardrooms, her answers are honest, incisive and refreshing. They reveal the mind of a strategist, observer and woman determined to re-establish Gap as the go-to label for all-American classics.
What makes her vision for Gap different from what she achieved for Cos, she says, lies in what makes American and European fashion distinct. “When I arrived at Gap, one of the first things I learnt is that American casual fashion is a lot more about lifestyle than style. It’s more about how you live your life and how your clothes fit into that, than an aesthetic proposition.”
Her focus now is creating what she terms “the hard-working wardrobe” – one that’s impervious to seasons and can take
you from wintry climates to a sojourn in Bali seamlessly. The idea is to add different colours and trend-driven looks to a staple wardrobe.
It explains the theme of Bay’s debut Spring 2014 collection: lived in. “These are the pieces that are probably going to live with you for the rest of your life because you never want to be without them,” she says.
The collection brings the spotlight back to Gap’s core categories, in particular the denims, khakis and knits that first made it famous. “I’ve always loved true basics and I really want for Gap to be the best in class when it comes to the T-shirt, sweatshirt or little denim jacket. I want the brand to own those wardrobe staples.”
The tricky part is knowing what – and how much – to add to spice up the assortment. “Come on, I’m a fashion designer,” laughs Bay. “I still want to create excitement. I’m quite happy wearing jeans day in and day out, but I want them tweaked. Sometimes, I want the volume slightly different; other times, I might want a new wash or dye.”
Contemplating for a moment, she finds the perfect buzz word: “It’s the ‘now’ element, which is not necessarily what is new, but what’s relevant. It could be that the most iconic pieces are what is trending now.”
To get it right, Bay’s game plan is to “try to slow down and speed up the pace of fashion at the same time”, a statement that initially sounds puzzling, but in fact makes perfect sense. It could even be the only way to maintain a brand’s integrity, while keeping it hot in today’s world of throwaway fashion: Stick to the forever pieces that a Gap customer will find in every collection, without forgetting the fun stuff that may fly off the racks this season, but be gone the next.
“I want to be able to get these items in and out easily, “says Bay, showing me an ombre boyfriend shirt from a rail of summer essentials. “I love this, but I don’t know if we will want this a year from now.”
Thumbing through a selection of jackets, she stops at a cute cropped denim number.“Here, you have a true authentic denim jacket, but the sleeve is a little rounder and prettier. It references a ’50s opera coat, but has been translated to a denim look. There are the standards that you can’t avoid, but I try to nail down what is the ‘now’ factor I can bring to it for the season.”
She’s spoken about the product and her plans for the brand, but what of the Gap woman herself? “It’s the same woman,” Bay replies without a moment’s hesitation. “I think she’s a lot of women. The only difference is that now, I would like to speak to her in a more aspirational way.”
In the following months, as the brand starts making headlines, Bay’s words come back to me. A Huffington Post article commending Gap’s “incredible response” to racism draws 134,085 likes on the news blog’s Facebook page. Its Visionaire collaboration was one of the most buzzed about events at Art Basel Miami last December, and its Back To Blue ad campaign features singer Alexa Joel Ray’s soulful rendition of her father Billy Joel’s ’70s hit Just The Way You Are, which has racked up close to a million views on Youtube.
Indeed, the Gap woman hasn’t changed. She’s just showing us her best side yet.