Gap’s sales are up. Its employees are returning to headquarters full-time starting Sept. 2. Its creative director, Zac Posen, is dressing the stars. And its recent ad campaign featuring “global girl group” Katseye went megaviral, racking up 70 million likes across social media in a week. All signs that the Gapaissance is very, very real.
To keep up the momentum, a crew from Gap’s global brand experience team worked around the clock last weekend to build an exact replica of the white box set from the “Better in Denim” video to be housed inside the five-story atrium at Gap Inc.’s corporate office on the Embarcadero. With the help of the artist and set designer Wesley Goodrich, they re-created the “Breathing Room,” a hydraulically-enhanced, five-sided cube that pulses with the beat of music like an oversize amp.
Bringing the set home to San Francisco was an eleventh-hour idea inspired by the skyrocketing success of “Better in Denim.” The 90-second ad debuted Aug. 19, racking up 15 million Instagram views in the first 24 hours — triple the previous record held by a Gap post. The ’90s-esque ad features L.A.-based Katseye dancing in Gap’s now-signature synchronized style to Kelis’ throwback hit “Milkshake.”
Since the IRL version of the set was completed Sunday night at Gap HQ, employees and their friends have been lining up to pose, pulsate, and snap pics. The installation will remain in the lobby for five weeks and is accessible to all employees and registered guests. Everyone else can view it through the main doors at 2 Folsom St.
When Jessica Kim, a Gap associate product developer, showed up to work Tuesday morning, she wore the brand’s new pleated micromini pleat skirt and thigh-grazing black boots. She understood the assignment. After practicing a few hip shakes in front of her phone camera, she marched into the center of the main lobby in time with the distinctive darbuka beat of “Milkshake.”
Coworkers gathered around, phones thrust high in the air, whooping and clapping as Kim brought all the boys (and girls) to the yard.
The “Better in Denim” campaign was dreamed up by Gap’s head of creative, Calvin George Leung. The San Francisco native was installed in the top spot in early 2024, after more than a decade with the company, and has been busy spinning out collabs, events, and marketing campaigns that are propelling Gap back into the zeitgeist. While the ad campaign was months in the making, many fans perceived it as a joy-spiked clapback to American Eagle’s racially loaded Sydney Sweeney ad. The “better than yours” refrain was especially timely.
In February, Leung staged an elaborate fashion show at 2 Folsom celebrating a collaboration with Harlem Fashion Row. It featured a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd of fashion insiders, celebs, and athletes; a live performance by Kehlani; and a parade of high-energy dancers re-creating iconic campaigns from Gap’s archive.
This month, Gap made its first appearance at Outside Lands; festival attendees lined up for hours to score throwback hoodies customized on-site by artists from the Tenderloin sewing and design nonprofit Holy Stitch, while headliner Gracie Abrams took the stage in a bespoke Gap Studio dress designed by Posen.
Leung believes the recent ad campaign resonated with people because of Gap’s recommitment to the essence of the brand. Rather than shy away from the company’s ’90s heyday, Leung has been embracing it. When he started in 2011, he knew he wanted to dig up and dust off the elements that he remembered from his high school days in San Mateo, when walking into a Gap store was a cheat code to becoming cool.
“When I first started, nostalgia was kind of a dirty word,” he says. “I think people saw it as a handcuff, an inability to move forward. I saw it as the complete opposite. I saw it as a superpower of this place. Brands dream of being able to live 60 years and tell that story. We shouldn’t be afraid of it. We should lean into it and own it in a way that is ours.”
To that end, the “Better in Denim” ad is a meticulously souped-up way-back machine. Katseye comes with a rabid Gen Z fanbase, and Kelis’ 20-year-old radio hit has found a second life as a TikTok soundtrack. The kinetic choreography, paired with the wardrobe of Y2K-era low-rise denim and baggy khaki, is every Gap win captured in a single frame.
“When you look at Katseye, they are what San Francisco looks like,” says Leung, who gathered his creative team inside the Breathing Room for photos just before lunch Tuesday. “They’re global, they’re diverse, they’re confident. They’re all individuals, but as a collective, they’re extremely powerful.”
That energy was matched all morning while The Standard was at 2 Folsom. Powelle Funa, an assistant manager at Banana Republic (part of the Gap Inc. brand), was in a cropped denim vest and low-rise, wide-leg flares with a furry white cat keychain dangling from a belt loop. He had been tightening his moves all week in preparation for the Breathing Room pop-up. When he stepped into the box and started dancing, the crowd collectively gasped. He was flawless.
A few minutes later, Julian Prince Dash, the founder of Holy Stitch, strolled through with a few fellow artists, stopping to pose inside the installation. Prince Dash will be back at Gap HQ to revive their Outside Lands customization station starting next week, when employees will be invited to bring in their denim for on-site stitching and embroidery. The pop-up coincides with Gap Inc.’s official back-to-the-office policy, when all of its nearly 2,000 San Francisco employees will be on the premises five days a week. “Milkshake” is all cued up.
“This is the swagger we want to bring back to the city,” says Leung. “San Francisco has always been a place where you don't feel different for being different. We want to be a direct reflection of the soul of this place.”