Gap

The first Gap opened on 21 August 1969 on Ocean Avenue in San Francisco, near City College. Its founder, Donald Fisher, was a commercial real-estate broker who had noticed how hard it was to find the right size of Levi's jeans; even Macy's, Levi Strauss's biggest customer, was constantly running out. Through his friend Walter Haas Jr., president of Levi Strauss & Co., he struck a deal: his store would stock Levi's in every style and size, grouped by size, and Levi's would keep it replenished overnight from its warehouse in San Jose. His wife, Doris Fisher, chose the name, a nod to the "generation gap", and the shop sold only Levi's and LP records to draw in teenagers.

The idea worked. By 1973 there were more than 25 stores, and in 1974 Gap began selling its own private-label clothing, which over time replaced the Levi's that had launched it. The company bought the safari-themed retailer Banana Republic in 1983 and turned it into an upmarket brand.

Gap's golden age came under Millard "Mickey" Drexler, who led its merchandising from the 1980s and became chief executive. He gave the brand a clean, upscale identity built on denim, khakis, white shirts, pocket T-shirts and hoodies, sold in bright, orderly stores and promoted through memorable advertising. In the 1990s Gap was the uniform of casual America, and the company launched Old Navy as a lower-priced sibling. Over-expansion, a long sales slump and tensions with the Fisher family led to Drexler's departure in 2002; he went on to run J.Crew.

The decades since have been a search for a lost centre. Successive chief executives closed stores and tried new directions, while designers came and went: Patrick Robinson was hired as chief designer in 2007 and dismissed in 2011 after sales failed to improve. A 10-year partnership with Kanye West's Yeezy, announced in 2020, ended in 2022 when West terminated it. Gap Inc. also added the women's activewear brand Athleta. Donald Fisher, who had remained on the board, died in 2009.

A revival began in the 2020s under chief executive Richard Dickson, a former Mattel president, who refocused the brand on its archive and its cultural reach. In February 2024 the designer Zac Posen was appointed creative director of Gap and chief creative officer of Old Navy, and his reworkings of denim and the white shirt, worn on red carpets, drew new attention to the brand. More than fifty years after a jeans shop in San Francisco, Gap remains a byword for American basics.