This invigorating vibrancy and Frisco aptitude is seeping into Gap Inc. as we all know it in the present day. The garments, whether or not they’re from Posen’s elevated Gap Studio or cheerful Old Navy, are tailor-made but relaxed and easy, and typically boast searing saturations. He brings up a flamboyant striped chunky turtleneck sweater from 2001 and says that he’s releasing his personal Zac-ified reissue. There was additionally that fantastical ROYGBIV addict Christopher John Rogers x Old Navy assortment this previous April. And when Posen labored on his first Met Gala because the model’s inventive director, with actor Da’Vine Joy Randolph in 2024, he designed her a denim robe in crisp mild and darkish blues, impressed, he says, by the coloration of San Francisco Bay. (This 12 months he dressed Kendall Jenner in a winged twist on the basic Gap white tee.)
.jpg)
Whether on the road or on the workplace, Posen is happy by the unbridled sartorial creativity in San Francisco, from the loud to the demure. Yes, there are typically public shows of nudity, which he sweetly describes as “very eccentric people that proudly exist in their full freak-flag regalia.” But he notes that “there’s also a general California casual, laid-back elegance—a kind of Western minimalism” to San Francisco fashion. He describes going to the opera and questioning what folks’s outfits are: “Is it Ann Demeulemeester? Is it Yohji? Rick? There is this understated quality of a double-faced boiled wool or the clean white ease of the perfect T-shirt. [But] I would never call it quiet because [San Franciscans] are not quiet people.”
As for Posen’s private fashion evolution by means of SF: “I’ve never worn more linen in my life!” What extra may you count on from a Gap man within the straightforward, breezy City by the Bay?
This article appeared within the July/August 2026 difficulty of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the journal here.