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We dont need to denigrate homosexuals to say Zac Posen is trash.
How is being a power bottom degenerate lol , I don't know what rock your sleeping under, but its well known Posen is a talentless hack and is nothing more than a social queen and an over the hill twink from the Upper East Side and thats not me saying it thats any rich gay man in Manhattan saying this.. If you feel offended that was not the intention, and the main point was he did not get this job on talent, but based of social connections and yes very, very often it does involve sexual favors and thats not just limited to orientation btw and thats how many industries do function even at the very top echelons.
Inside the Great Gap Glow-Up
Can Zac Posen, known for over-the-top glamour, reinvent the American mall brand — and change his reputation in the process?
By Vanessa Friedman
Reporting from San Francisco
On Friday morning, just at the start of New York Fashion Week, more than 1,000 designers, models, factory workers, editors, retailers and influencers will gather in front of Macy’s Herald Square and march up Broadway to Bryant Park to get out the vote. Most of them will be wearing the same thing: a white T-shirt (or T-shirt dress) with black letters that spell out the doodled slogan “Fashion for Our Future.” The designer: Zac Posen, for Old Navy.
- Sept. 5, 2024
In other words, what is essentially a giant Old Navy show is going to be one of the first big events of New York Fashion Week.
“Crazy, right?” Mr. Posen said a few weeks earlier. He was bouncing on his toes in his glass-walled corner office at Gap Inc.’s headquarters in San Francisco, showing off a sample T-shirt. Crazy, he meant, that most of New York fashion would deign to don the same tee — and crazy that it would be one of his.
After all, in 2019, Mr. Posen, former dauphin of New York fashion, protégé of Tom Ford, prince of the red carpet, became the cautionary tale of the industry: the hotshot who lost his way, his name and his brand, in the wilds of ego and private equity. Since then, he had been cobbling together a freelance collaboration here, a private commission there, to make ends meet. He was, professionally, off the radar.
So were Old Navy and its parent company, Gap Inc., the onetime avatar of cool Americana that had turned khakis and a white T-shirt into a billion-dollar behemoth once modeled by Joan Didion and LL Cool J. Overexpansion and excessive discounting had sent it on a 20-year decline, left behind by the fast-fashion giants Zara and H&M. A series of chief executives had promised turnarounds only to see sales slow and the stock fall ever farther. An ill-fated deal in 2020 with Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, left the company with egg on its face.
The group is still big — last year’s sales were $14.9 billion — but it had become “just product,” said Anna Wintour, the chief content officer of Condé Nast. “It had the name, it had the recognition, but there was no sense of excitement.”
Then, in August 2023, Richard Dickson, Mattel’s “Barbie” mastermind, was hired as chief executive. He decided that one of the problems with Gap was fear of taking risks. So he took one.
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Double denim: Mr. Posen at Gap headquarters with Da’Vine Joy Randolph in a look he designed for her for the Met Gala.Credit...Conrad Khalil
In February, he hired Mr. Posen to be chief creative officer of Old Navy and executive vice president and creative director of Gap Inc. The two newly created positions make Mr. Posen his “creative partner” overseeing products, advertising and stores for all Gap brands — not just Old Navy but also Gap, Banana Republic and Athleta.
A man who had never managed more than 60 people was now helping to steer thousands of employees. A guy whose last gig was creating ball gowns for Ryan Murphy’s recreation of the Truman Capote black and white ball in “Feud: Capote vs. the Swans” was going to turn his hand to basics.
“I certainly didn’t see that coming,” Ms. Wintour said.
The stakes are high for Mr. Posen and the company. The only thing pop culture loves more than an odd-couple story is a resurrection story. This has the potential to be both. But there is also a fine line between being relevant and being elitist. Get it wrong, and it could be a disaster.
“Just don’t call it a comeback,” Mr. Posen said.
From Tuxedos to Bluejeans
In any case, he is all in. He has traded his suits and tuxedos for jeans.
“When I met him, he was always wearing a suit,” said Harrison Ball, Mr. Posen’s fiancé, a former principal dancer with the New York City Ballet. “He existed on a red carpet. That’s what his company and his career demanded of him. I’m cleaning a 20-year-old storage unit right now. It’s like, tuxedo, tuxedo, tuxedo, tuxedo.”
During the early months of the pandemic, Mr. Ball said, Mr. Posen “started to wear jeans and took his shoes off and stopped styling his hair.” According to Ms. Wintour, when he told her about his new job, his look was “full denim.”
He hasn’t entirely swapped New York for San Francisco — Mr. Posen kept his Upper East Side apartment — but he spends at least half his time in a new rental house on the bay. At 43, he still has the riot of dark curls that he had as a baby designer, the deep dimples and the Tom Ford-style stubble, but he looks a little more weathered around the eyes.
Mr. Ball found the house on Zillow. Four stories of wood and brick, it is set on a hill, with a red door and two widow’s walks overlooking the bay. From the attic room, you can lie on an old iron bed, look directly out a window and see only water.
In the back, there is a garden where Mr. Posen grows jasmine, nightshades and nasturtiums. Next year, he said, he is planning to add “edibles” to the garden.
“Not those kinds of edibles,” he said when a guest raised an eyebrow. He meant edible flowers. They are nice in a salad.
The couple commutes between San Francisco and New York. Mr. Posen is usually on an airplane; Mr. Ball, 31, drives back and forth with the couple’s two miniature poodles: Tsuki, named after the Japanese word for moon, and Bizet, named for the composer. (Mr. Posen, a prototypical New Yorker, does not drive.)
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Mr. Posen and his fiancé, Harrison Ball, at the New York City Ballet spring gala in 2022.Credit...Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times
When the couple met in 2020, Mr. Ball said, Mr. Posen had one poodle. “And I was like: ‘Zac, I love you, baby, but I cannot be the dancer living with a fashion designer and a poodle. So your dog has to go live with your parents or something.’ Then within two weeks, I started taking her to the theater, and I fell in love with her. And then I got another one.”
The two got engaged two years ago, and they have gone through their career transitions together. Mr. Ball’s last season with the ballet coincided with Mr. Posen’s freelance period, and the designer came to every one of Mr. Ball’s performances, sitting in the first ring in the seat that used to be George Balanchine’s and making dinner for assorted dancers afterward.
“But I chose to leave,” Mr. Ball said. “Zac didn’t. He was forced to make that choice.” It was, he said, “devastating.”
‘What Am I Doing Here?’
Mr. Posen prefers to think of his current job as another stage in his hero’s journey, the one that took him from SoHo, where he was raised by an artist father and a lawyer mother; to St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn, where he started dressing friends like Lola Schnabel and Jemima Kirke; to Central Saint Martins in London, holding his first fashion show at 21 and founding the House of Z, the name of the operating company that owned his brand.
His descent into Tartarus — Mr. Posen is given to describing his trajectory in mythic terms — came after years of struggling to build the business. In 2019, his private equity backer, Ronald Burkle’s Yucaipa Companies, finally decided it was time for its exit and, after failing to find a buyer, wound down the House of Z, selling all of its intellectual property and archives. (Mr. Posen received nothing.) That was just before Covid restrictions put fashion on pause for months — a dark period that prepared Mr. Posen to scale the heights, or at least the 15-story headquarters, of Gap Inc., with its soaring Richard Serra sculpture in the lobby, its “Gapeteria” (the employee canteen) and its views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Treasure Island.
“Everything has led to this,” Mr. Posen said. “This” being his new office, and life, in San Francisco; “everything” being the multiple side gigs he took on to finance his own business that helped school him in accessibility. See his line with David’s Bridal, his stint designing the uniforms for Delta Air Lines, his work as the head of Brooks Brothers women’s wear and his six years as a judge on “Project Runway.”
Even if, he said, Gap wasn’t on his radar “at all.” Even if he remembered thinking on his first day, “What am I doing here?”
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How it was: Mr. Posen as a judge on “Project Runway.”Credit...Barbara Nitke/Lifetime
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How it’s going: Mr. Posen with Richard Dickson, the chief executive of Gap Inc., on the terrace of Gap headquarters in San Francisco. Credit...via Gap
Yet it was Mr. Posen’s experience with failure that Mr. Dickson said was part of what attracted him to the designer when they first met at Balthazar in SoHo, over French fries and tea. Another plus: Mr. Posen’s understanding of fit. (Memorably, Banana Republic once made a blazer with armholes too small for an average woman to wear.)
At that point, Mr. Posen and Mr. Ball had pretty much decided to move to Paris, and Mr. Posen had been interviewing for the designer gig at several French brands. He declined to say which ones, but gossip suggests Lanvin and Givenchy. Mr. Dickson was looking for a creative director for Old Navy, by far the largest Gap Inc. brand and, as the second largest apparel brand in the United States, with net sales of $8.2 billion last year, its financial engine. (Gap brand sales were $3.3 billion.)
After that conversation, both men were so excited that Mr. Posen persuaded Mr. Dickson to extend his remit to all of the Gap brands.
“I really appreciated that Zac had gone through very difficult periods of his career,” Mr. Dickson said. It’s the ability to handle both success and challenge that is critical, he said, “when you’re in a leadership role at this level and scale.” He said Mr. Posen was “humble,” a word never much associated with the designer before.
Fashiontainment
“For fashion, you’re supposed to be demure, and you’re supposed to be cool and not that friendly, and then there’s this guy who’s so eager, like a puppy,” Mr. Ball said. “That eagerness can come off as narcissism.” Or hubris.
It often seemed as if Mr. Posen, whose story can seem like an improbable fashion version of “Zelig,” was so enchanted by his own good fortune that he expected everyone else to be enchanted, too. He landed in London for college and immediately met Anita Pallenberg. An early show was partly underwritten by Mr. Ford and Domenico de Sole; they dressed him in Tom Ford suits. He said “Azzedine” (as in Alaïa) told him to go out on his own, and “Yohji” (as in Yamamoto) told him to move his show to Paris.
When asked about his wedding, he said that he and Mr. Ball were thinking of doing something small and quiet, at City Hall … but then, he would also like a giant, “This Is Your Life”-style blowout with Bernadette Peters (“my first commission when I came back from Saint Martins”) and Madonna performing, and guests like Liza Minnelli, Rihanna and Jennifer Hudson. He has stories about them all.
“I always felt more comfortable in the entertainment industry than in my own fashion industry,” Mr. Posen said. He never won a designer of the year award, as he is quick to point out. His gowns often had a wowza Hollywood glamour that was more Cecil DeMille than Charles James.
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Mr. Posen takes a bow with Naomi Campbell at the end of his fall 2015 collection.Credit...John Minchillo/Associated Press
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Claire Danes in a Zac Posen gown at the Met Gala in 2016.Credit...Getty/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Sarah Jessica Parker in Zac Posen at a New York City Ballet gala in 2019.Credit...Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times
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Mr. Posen and Julia Garner (in Zac Posen) at the Met Gala in 2019.Credit...Landon Nordeman for The New York Times
Still, Mr. Posen is relentlessly positive. He said his time off had allowed him, for the first time in his career, to spend real time with his family (especially important after his mother’s cancer diagnosis last year) and to get some crucial perspective on all the silly fashion stuff.
“Having your company closed and not knowing what to do after that much time is terrifying,” he said. “People were writing things as if I had died. But I wouldn’t have traded the opportunity and how this happened for anything in the world.”
Jordan Roth, the theater producer, who has commissioned numerous opening-night looks from Mr. Posen, compared him to Willy Wonka, P.T. Barnum and Walt Disney, wrapped in one. Mr. Dickson called him the Pied Piper. Ms. Wintour said, “There’s something very old-fashioned about him.”
The irony is, Mr. Posen’s affinity for a bit of unironic razzle-dazzle may have made fans of high-concept dress a little sniffy, but it makes him perfect for a company like Gap Inc. At this moment, as fashion segues into entertainment, he may actually have stumbled into his ideal job.
The Blue Glow
At Mr. Posen’s office at Gap Inc., an entire wall is covered in printouts of what he has planned. On his desk is a new laptop with a yellow stickie note containing his name and password, a photo-booth printout of himself and Mr. Ball mugging at the Vanity Fair Oscar party and a bra from Athleta with a flexible underwire that he thought could be used as a base for draping an evening gown.
One of the first things Mr. Posen did when he arrived at Gap was work on a new blue. Actually, three new blues: an official Gap Inc. blue (the company is exploring its own Pantone shade); a Gap-brand blue, sort of between Yves Klein and cerulean; and an Old Navy “new navy,” like “a good yacht.” Mr. Posen could imagine the Gap-brand blue as a special light that will illuminate the stores at night so they have their own “blue glow.” It could also be the color of new “Gapsicles” (a Gap ice pop) that could be sold in stores, with flavors like blue borage. This is the kind of “why not?” that is his happy place.
At Old Navy, he has been focusing on the details: party dresses cut high enough in the back to cover the bra strap, a ruffle added to an off-the-shoulder dress to cover the upper arms. The team bought back a few of his old evening gowns for reference, since he lost his archive. He says things like, “That color makes me depressed — it’s like the pea soup of teal,” but in a nice way.
Oh, and he says, “I love brainstorming with all the brand C.E.O.s!”
He has enlisted Jacqueline Schnabel to help curate the Banana Republic stores, and Tonne Goodman, the Vogue sustainability editor, as a stylist on the campaigns. The first one starred Carolyn Murphy and the second, Lauren Hutton. (“I have to be honest, I was really surprised by the clothes,” Ms. Goodman said. “The quality is excellent.”)
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The model Carolyn Murphy, Tonne Goodman (in glasses) and Mr. Posen on set for a Banana Republic campaign shoot, styled by Ms. Goodman. Credit...Banana Republic
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Anne Hathaway at a Bulgari event in 2024 wearing a $158 Gap shirtdress designed by Mr. Posen. It sold out in less than six hours.Credit...Elisabetta Villa/Getty Images For Bulgari
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Da’Vine Joy Randolph at the Met Gala in 2024 in a denim gown by Mr. Posen. It was the first time a custom-made Gap look had been worn by a celebrity at the event.Credit...Amir Hamja/The New York Times
Demi Moore, who once appeared in a Gap ad back when it was cool, wants to make another. Mr. Posen brought Gap to the Met Gala, on Da’Vine Joy Randolph, and made a white shirtdress for Anne Hathaway to wear to a Bulgari event. Though there was some critical pushback about his going the celebrity route, he sees it as being part of the cultural conversation — and Gap history. Afterward, the Met Gala dress was displayed in the lobby of the Gap headquarters, and employees took selfies with it.
Mr. Posen is reveling in the fact that, after 20 years of running a business on a shoestring, he finally has resources. For him, Mr. Roth said, “commercial is not a limitation, it’s an opportunity.” He gets as animated about the technology that allows Old Navy teams to digitally sample a garment in 3-D, so there is no physical waste, as he did about double-face satin. He is planning to increase the internship program to create a pipeline of young designers from schools like Central Saint Martins, so that future hims consider Gap a potential career path, as they do LVMH.
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Mr. Posen outside of Gap headquarters in San Francisco.Credit...Nicholas Albrecht for The New York Times
He feels like the needle is moving. When he began approaching designers for collaborations, the answers, he said, were almost always: “Let’s see. We’re not ready for that. We love Zac, but we’re not sure it’s right for us.” Now, he said, he has a slate of names lined up. The group’s second-quarter results, released at the end of August, beat sales expectations. There may even be a full-fledged show next year. In the meantime, along with outfitting the fashion week march, Old Navy is also throwing a big 30th-anniversary bash during the New York collections.
The point is, Mr. Posen said, those Old Navy T-shirts (which are going to be sold in stores) don’t just say “Vote.” They say, Mr. Posen noted, “We’re ready to be part of the conversation again.”
