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Don Fisher, co founder of the Gap, died on Sunday. Mr. Fisher was 81, and had been battling cancer.
While you may not have known Don Fisher's name, you certainly knew his brands; he and wife Doris opened their first Gap store in San Francisco in 1969. In 1983, the Gap Inc. acquired Banana Republic; Old Navy launched in the early 1990s. In 2006 Gap Inc. added the shoe etailer Piperlime to their family, and earlier this year, the company acquired women's sportswear line Athleta.
But it was that first Gap store that changed everything.
Doris Fisher named the chain, for the "generation gap" between parents and kids, something that was on everyone's mind in the late 1960s. The idea behind the store was that a parent could shop the Gap with the kids and everyone could leave with a purchase. But the driving force behind the chain was simply a desire for good jeans. FabSugar notes that "the Gap revolutionized retail — the Fishers were inspired by a frustrating shopping experience. The couple had difficulty exchanging an ill-fitting pair of jeans and couldn't find the right denim size with the assortment at local department stores."
Last weekend, I bought a pair of "boyfriend jeans" at the Gap. Boyfriend jeans are women's jeans modeled on men's jeans, if that makes any sense; the pair I bought were "destructed," which means that they were pre-damaged (I actually found a small bit of pumice in one pocket). The idea is that it's like wearing your boyfriend's worn in, worn out jeans, but without the boyfriend. And without waiting for the breaking in.
It's brilliant, really.
The original Gap store in San Francisco carried Levis jeans and records; the store made its mark as a denim retailer by offering more selection than the competition. Today the Gap is still recognized for their jeans, which come in a range of fits and sizes -- and, with the inclusion of Old Navy and Banana Republic, a rage of price points.
The Gap has had ups and downs over the past 40 years. According to the Wall Street Journal, "Gap has maintained profitability but sales remain lackluster. Total sales have fallen 11% in the last five years to $14.5 billion last year from $16.3 billion in 2004." Consumers have complained that the clothes Gap carries have been trending too young; in other words, women my age, who have the money to spend, aren't shopping at the Gap because the clothes are for kids, but kids aren't shopping at the Gap because the prices are for grown-ups.
Gap has begun to turn itself around, though; in 2007, designer Patrick Robinson, 45, was hired as Head Designer, and the brand began to return to its roots. Which gets me back to those boyfriend jeans I was talking about before.
The Gap changed the way we think about fashion and retail; before Don and Doris Fisher opened that first store, jeans were simply a staple, not a statement. Americans bought jeans like they bought groceries, without much thought to style. But the Gap changed that, and in doing so, opened the door for other small chains serving a niche client base.
The Gap made stylish clothes easily accessible, and totally affordable, particularly in the past two decades, with the addition of the Banana Republic and Old Navy brands. Gap's short-lived Fourth and Towne line, which catered to women over 40, was the next logical step, although it wound up being a huge mis-step; Fourth and Towne pieces were not available online, which cut their client base down to nothing.
Which left the Gap and their jeans.
Gap jeans are still an American staple; for many of us, the Gap is our default go-to for denim. The Huffington Post's Michael Cohen went looking for jeans recently and, to his surprise, wound up at a Gap store:
So I made my way to the GAP (which in NY is as easy as finding a Starbucks) and found the least busy sales person who might listen to my designer jeans doldrums. She didn't care, at all. But she did bring me the six different versions that are part of GAP's makeover efforts to sell jeans to people like me.
She also explained, with a bizarre almost infatuated enthusiasm, how GAP is celebrating
