Can Gap Keep Up Its Hot Streak?

Gap is on a roll. In the last year, the brand has released hit campaign after hit campaign, such as a viral ad with K-Pop group Katseye, a spring campaign starring actor Parker Posey — timed perfectly with her White Lotus starring role — and a string of collaborations with buzzy labels such Sandy Liang, Cult Gaia, Beis and MadHappy that put Gap at the centre of the cultural conversation.

Creative director Zac Posen has also brought Gap into Hollywood’s orbit, dressing stars from Timothée Chalamet to Anne Hathaway in the elevated GapStudio line. That momentum started showing up in the numbers: Gap Inc swung from losses in 2022 to net income of $844 million in fiscal year 2024, and the namesake Gap brand led recent results, with 2025 fourth quarter sales up 8 percent.

Behind the scenes, the turnaround runs deeper than marketing. The company eliminated $100 million in costs in 2024, and targeted an additional $150 million in 2025 across technology, marketing, operating costs and stores, while also diversifying sourcing away from China, driving Gap’s highest gross margins in 25 years.

The results show up in BoF Insights’ Brand Pulse tracker as well, which measures fashion brand performance along five metrics including discoverability, value perception and love. Gap leads performance among the high street brands assessed in 2025, driven by strong scores in value perception and customer love for the brand.

But creating brand heat is not the same as sustaining it. The question is, can Gap keep it up?

BoF Insights used our proprietary AI-brand research tools developed in partnership with Quilt.AI to understand what Gap needs to do to keep the momentum going.

Leading the conversation

We analysed the social media conversation around Gap and four competitors — Uniqlo, Zara, Abercrombie and Fitch and J.Crew — assessing and clustering 2,700 posts on TikTok and Instagram to understand what customers say when they talk about these brands, and how each brand shows up.

BoF Insights runs this analysis for brands at inflection points to map where they lead, where they are exposed, and which audiences competitors are quietly winning.

We found that four topics drive 86 percent of the conversation:

• Chasing the Staple is the conversation focused on hunting for the perfect everyday item such as the perfect white T-shirt, leads with around a third of posts.
• Brand Renaissance refers to online discussion around brands’ histories and ascents into cultural and financial success.
• Fit and Size Debate is a polarising topic, in which customers discuss brands that get size and fit right, as well as those that are inconsistent or inaccurate.
• Materials and Craft discourse explores quality, fabrics and durability.

Nearly half of the online conversation about Gap, 41 percent, is around Brand Renaissance. This could be a good thing: Gap’s brand turnaround is a positive story. But it also means that Gap is less present in other conversations like Chasing the Staple, which is an important commercial objective for moving products.

Despite its reputation for basics, Gap appears in only 17 percent of this conversation. Competitor Uniqlo leads here. Abercrombie and Fitch owns the positive conversation around Fit and Size, thanks in part to its size-inclusive product lines such as Curve Love denim. J.Crew leads the conversation on Materials and Craft.

Who are Gap’s customers?

We next analysed the people engaging in these social media conversations to build out a psychographic segmentation of Gap and its competitors’ audiences.

Our AI Segmentation revealed six broad segments, three of which account for 70 percent of the audience:

• The Seasonal Refresher, 27 percent of the market, shops for the fun of it and buys in volume.
• The Garment Literate (23 percent) approaches fashion with a discerning eye, and will read care labels and assess fabric and durability before purchasing.
• The Fashion Conversant (20 percent) is your culture aficionado. This segment engages with brands based on trends and cultural relevance.

The picture that emerges from the segmentation analysis is telling. Gap appears more than its competitors in posts by the culture-forward Fashion Conversant talking about Gap’s impressive reinvention. Gap appears less frequently in posts by the Garment Literate.

We then blended this customer segmentation with conversation analysis to understand why each brand resonates with its segments.

Zara leads with the Seasonal Refresher (in other words, the heavy shopper) due to the brand’s quick trend turnaround. Abercrombie and Fitch is also referenced regularly by this segment, but Seasonal Refreshers talk about Abercrombie in regards to its reputation for great fit and inclusive sizing. When these shoppers bring up Gap, they focus on reliable staples like jeans and sweatshirts.

Uniqlo and J.Crew are both popular with the Garment Literate customer, who talks about Uniqlo’s proprietary fabrics like Heat Tech and J.Crew’s construction and materials.

Gap’s edge is with the culture crowd, likely a result of its campaigns driving high engagement with the trend-forward audience.

The problem with being the comeback kid

Gap is exactly where a brand investing in cultural renaissance wants to be: engaging the culture-forward consumer with viral campaigns and driving conversations around its own comeback. But this narrative does not have longevity. And notably, that the brand currently lacks a positioning beyond “culturally relevant.”

Our conversation and segmentation analysis reveal that Gap’s competitors are anchored in more durable and defensible brand positioning: Zara owns trends; Abercrombie owns fit. Uniqlo, fabrics. Gap’s positioning as the culture-forward brand is resonant, but its continued success will depend on its ability to keep launching culturally viral campaigns. That is a tall order for any brand marketing team.

A significant portion of Gap’s conversation (41 percent) is wrapped around Gap’s comeback. A brand renaissance is, by definition, a temporary story. Once that conversation fades (as it did with Abercrombie just a couple of years ago) Gap will need another pillar to drive conversation, or else the brand will fade with it.

It is also worth noting what is not registering in Gap’s conversation. Gap launched its own fabric innovation, a cotton-nylon-acrylic blend called CashSoft, as part of its elevation strategy. CashSoft barely comes up in our analysis. Gap’s appointment of Zac Posen as chief creative officer has driven cultural relevance via celebrity tie-ups, but Posen’s presence has yet to build Gap’s credibility in craft and materials.

The fix isn’t complicated

Gap’s comeback story likely has another 12 to 18 months before it becomes old news and another brand’s turnaround comes into the limelight. Gap’s job is simple: Cement a more durable brand story before that clock runs out.

The good news? Between its CashSoft innovation and Zac Posen, Gap already has the ingredients to differentiate itself.

If Gap can bring its product into storytelling, it can build credibility as a brand for quality staples. Gap has already built a marketing organisation capable of driving culture. Why not bring these together, and make CashSoft a cultural story, not just a product?

Second, give Zac Posen another job. He’s done extraordinary work on tapping the right celebrities at the most talked-about events. But Posen’s history as a luxury designer is currently underleveraged. Posen can be the spokesperson for Gap’s craft voice: the person who explains why the fabric, the fit and the construction of Gap products are different from everything else at its price point.

Neither of these requires heavy investment, but they do require Gap to trade on the cultural heat it has already built and lay a foundation that lasts.

Gap owns the moment. The question is what comes after it.

How BoF Insights builds brand strategy with AI

BoF Insights is The Business of Fashion‘s in-house data and advisory team. Our AI brand research roots strategy in real-time consumer behaviour: what people actually talk about, who is saying it and which brands are winning the conversation.

For Gap, that meant analysing thousands of posts compared with four competitors, surfacing a vulnerability the numbers alone would not show. We do the same for brands navigating their own inflection points: a new launch, a repositioning, a competitive threat, a category expansion.

If you want to know what your brand’s version of this looks like — where you lead, where you are trailing, and which audiences your competitors are winning, contact us for a conversation.

How BoF Insights Tracks Brand Performance with Brand Pulse

BoF Insights Brand Pulse is a brand performance tracker designed for the fashion industry. The tool measures discoverability, identity, value perception, connection, and love, monitoring performance over time to gauge progress, and helping brand leaders understand not just what is happening, but why.