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Over the last year, Gap has been popping up in an unexpected place for a heritage casual wear brand: the red carpet. Last July, Anne Hathaway wore a white shirt dress with matching bralette and Bulgari jewelry. In December, Demi Moore appeared in a black knit jersey dress and moto jacket. And just this past February, Timoth�e Chalamet showed up in a black satin workwear set. Zac Posen, Gap Inc.s executive vice president and creative director, had designed all of them under the new label, GapStudio. And now, Gap is bringing GapStudio to the masses as it officially launches the new, higher-end Gap sub-brand, designed to elevate Gap’s perception, extend its reach to younger consumers, and help regain its cultural cach�. Zac Posen [Photo: Mario Sorrenti/GapStudio] GapStudio will launch four seasonal collections a year, along with select standalone drops starting with this Spring capsule, called GapStudioCollection 01. The collection includes a range of elevated basics that play into classic styles Gap is known for, but with contemporary and trend-driven silhouettes, and elevated fabrications and construction. Prices range from $78-$248, and will be available online and in select stores starting this Thursday.� Posens role is far-reaching across Gap Inc, but GapStudio seems to be the most direct expression of his crossover from the red carpet gowns of his former high-end designer label to Gap Incs accessible everyday denim. Posen led the collections design processes, creative directed its launch campaign with zeitgeisty photographers, models, and stylists from his network, and onboarded a team hes worked with for decades to bring it to life. [Photo: Mario Sorrenti/GapStudio] The move to revive a brand’s Americana cool factor GapStudio is launching close to a year after Posen joined Gap Inc, where he oversees the creative direction of its brands, including Gap, Banana Republic, Athleta, and Old Navy, for which he is also chief creative officer. He and his team work out of the GapStudio atelier (thats fashion for workshop), a new space in Gap Incs New York City headquarters thats the epicenter of a new design vision for Gap. After shuttering his namesake brand in 2019 and spending seven years at Brooks Brothers, Gap Inc hired Posen to revive the defunct heritage brand known more for its deep sales than for its fit. According to the companys fourth quarter earnings report, net sales were down 3% in its last quarter compared to the previous year. But the full 2024 fiscal year shows that online sales were up 4% and net sales were up 1%. In-store sales remained flat. Posens first collection for GapStudio offers up a tangible sense of where he wants to take the brand. The collection includes a mix of polished but contemporary everyday pieces, including denim sailor pants, cropped white button downs, and dresses (the Anne Hathaway will be available in a new color), ribbed tanks and dresses, slinky slip dresses, a denim moto and a trench coat with a pleated back. You have to have that range within a very tight collection to be able to do that, says Posen of the mix between casual and elevated styles. He notes that the slip dress could be worn with shoes or heels. Daystomper, night stalker. [Photo: Mario Sorrenti/GapStudio] Brand elevation through construction, silhouette, and association Posen applied a studied eye to the construction of the pieces. He showed me the collection in the Gap Inc showroom in NYC’s Tribeca neighborhood. I noted the curved seaming of the knit dress worn by Demi Moore, which gave the dress a slight bell shape. Those were Posens construction lines, he said, so the piece didnt have side seams. The seams themselves were made to have more dimension than a typical needle stitch, he pointed out. As he made his way through the collection racks, he pointed out more details: the $148 knit day dress, which is a fully fashioned knit, the dry hand of the rib tank, the sit of the shoulder and pick stitch of the khaki blazer. Posen pulls out a white denim corset cincher. Like, why not? he asks. He paired it with a white tank dress, but it appears in a few different looks throughout the campaign, making the case for its versatility. The collection also has sweatshirts for when youre not in the mood to be so cinched. He thumbs to the slip dress, which has seaming he originally designed for a slip dress featured in a ballet his husband choreographed. Pajama glamour, he declared.Everyday street glamour. Red carpet to the street. That sentiment covers the range of the collection pretty well. Thats so cute as a look, and really young, Posen says referring to the sweatshirt look. There’s an explicit play for Gen Z with GapStudio. It’s been really fun to be building a collection with that in mind, in terms of expanding our customer base. [Photo: Mario Sorrenti/GapStudio] One way he did that, in addition to leaning into nascent Gen Z trends like bloomers, is through the GapStudio campaign itself. He tapped fashion photographer Mario Sorrenti, stylist Alastair McKimm, and supermodels Alex Consani, Imaan Hammam, and Anok Yai. He described the process of building the images as elevating the iconic. He hopes to tap into contemporary equivalents of the brands past partnerships with renowned photographers like Annie Leibowitz and Steven Miesel. GapStudio’s “elevated essentials” Ultimately, Posen wants GapStudio to communicate a sense of elevated essentials, he says. Great items that become staples in a wardrobe. Beloved pieces you always look for. Things that have style and trends without being disposable. To do that, he aims to balance Gaps metrics-driven approach with his own taste. Experimentation at any level is essential, he says. And it does appear that he is deeply involved with the GapStudio design team, including concepting, fitting, and fabrication. As we walked to the atelier down the hall from the showroom, he introduced me to team members hed worked with for 10, 15, and 20 years, who now work in the GapStudio label. Muslin toile draping by Zac Posen for a future piece in the GapStudio atelier. [Photo: Ava Imperio/GapStudio] As we talked and made our way through the atelier, he was distracted by the work of a designer who was draping and pinning a work-in-progress garment on a figure. I keep thinking about lowering the back on it, Posen said to the designer. You have to do a body suitthat’s what I said at like midnight last nightbut then we can go lower in the back and lower on the side. Hes comfortably in his element. I asked him what the piece was for. Thats a special project, he told me as we moved to the next station, without disclosing particulars.� Posen plans to invite other guest designers, a strategy that has worked well for bridge and mass market brands like Uniqlo and H&M. He sees the coalescence of longstanding relationships and skillsets into GapStudio as a starting point for innovation; a new chapter with old collaborators. The play is desirability, absolutely elevation, Posen says of GapStudio. The first collection, he says, is just the beginning.
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E-Commerce
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub�in your inbox?�Subscribe�to the ResiClub�newsletter. During the pandemic housing boom, home flipping surged as soaring home prices and ultralow-interest rates attracted more flippers, especially newcomers, to the market. However, as the market shifted due to the rate shock of 2022, home-flipping activity has seen the biggest pullback since 2007, and many of those newcomers pulled back. In the last quarter of 2018, there were 71,358 home flips. In the last quarter of 2021, that shot up to 120,531 flips, before falling to 87,851 flips in the last quarter of 2022. In the last quarter of 2024, there were just 69,929 flips. While some experienced flippers remain active, caution now prevails in the market. Regional challenges (including tight inventory in Connecticut and rising inventory in Florida) along with escalating costs have caused flippers to move forward with greater care. To better understand what’s going on in the home-flipping market, we’ve created the first-ever LendingOne-ResiClub Fix-and-Flip Survey. The flipper survey was fielded from February 1 to February 19, 2025. In total, 244 U.S. home flippers took the survey. To conduct the survey, ResiClub partnered with LendingOne, a private real estate lender. Our findings reveal that the home-flipping market in much of the Northeast remains competitive, as price appreciation, tight inventory, and aging housing stock create investment potential for fix-and-flip projects. However, home flippers in the region face intense competition for properties and elevated purchase prices. Here are some of the highlights: 1. Home flipper sentiment and plans Fix-and-flip activity:� 89% of home flippers plan to conduct at least one fix-and-flip in 2025.� 64% plan to convert at least one fix-and-flip project into a rental using the fix-to-rent method.� Market outlook: 32% of home flippers say demand for fix-and-flip properties in spring 2025 is “very strong.” In the Northeast, 59% of home flippers described demand as very strong.� 2. Financial considerations Renovation costs: 56% of U.S. home flippers say kitchen upgrades provide the best return on investment. 3. Flippers’ biggest concerns across the country Northeast: Housing inventory is the biggest challenge (34%). Midwest and Southwest: Competition for properties is reported as the top concern among flippers (31% and 34%).� Southeast: Borrowing costs are the biggest concern, with several home flippers specifically noting trouble accessing enough financing for projects. West: Labor and material costs are the top challenge (24%). Below you will find the full results to the LendingOne-ResiClub Fix-and-Flip Survey. (Due to rounding, some total responses might not equal 100%.)
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E-Commerce
After yet another round of protests disrupted hundreds of Tesla dealerships over the weekend, Elon Musk, the carmakers CEO/presidential sidekick, fumed on the social media platform he owns. In a series of tweets and retweets, Musk characterized those taking part in the demonstrations as paid protesters, sparking sympathetic replies on X, such as: How pathetic is your political party when you need to hire people to support it? Musk then went on to spend Sunday night orchestrating a rally for his political partys candidate in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, during which he gave away checks for a million dollars to two voters, as previously promised. Much like Walt Whitman, Elon Musk contains multitudes. Acting hypocritically is not against the lawwhich is probably for the best, since nearly everyone is guilty of it in one way or another. What makes Musks double standard so egregious, however, is that he has presented no hard evidence of the allegation he broadly lobs at othersoffering payouts to affect a political outcomewhile flagrantly engaging in the very activity he claims to find so repugnant. (Not to mention its questionable legalitydespite the Wisconsin Supreme Court declining a request to stop Musk.) Ever since protests started springing up at Tesla charging stations and showrooms back in February, a response to DOGEs haphazard firing and defunding spree, Musk has claimed these protests are bought and paid for by shadowy forces. Its apparently inconceivable that citizens would object to having their Social Security payments threatened or cancer research disrupted, and organically decide to put pressure on the DOGE heads stock portfolio. Musk even implied that the tens of thousands attending Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezs recent rallies are similarly paid protesters the Dems are moving around from one staged event to the next. This brand of political accusation is nothing new. During his first term, Donald Trump regularly accused the many hordes or protesters responding to his actions of being paid agitators. (Notably, the protests kept coming, despite the accusations.) The tactic extends back far beyond Trump, though. According to historian Kevin Kruse, segregationists claimed the high schoolers who desegregated Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957, had been paid for their efforts. If protest movements are meant to reflect the shared values of a diverse community with a common cause, such claims muddy the purity of participants and delegitimize their purpose. Among those aiding in the quest to cast suspicion on the staggering number of Tesla protests breaking out around the globe are Fox News and Joe Rogan, both of whom Elon Musk retweeted during a marathon griping session Sunday on X. But none of the evidence any of them have offered proves that a single protester has been paid to attend a Tesla demonstration. Indeed, the headline of the Fox News article that Musk tweeted on Sunday uses the words, Critics speculate, to frame its claims. What the accusations all boil down to is that Democrat-aligned groups such as Indivisible have become involved in the planning and execution of some of these protests. This is true, and those groups neither deny nor try to hide that. Seemingly because the truth does not sound nefarious enough, however, Musk and various media outlets instead claim these groups are leading the charge rather than connecting with already existing protest energy to make it even more powerful. Musk also contorts himself into logic pretzels to link these groups to 94-year old, left-leaning philanthropist George Soros, a longtime boogeyman for conservatives. (He also blamed Soros for hecklers showing up at his million-dollar giveaway on Sunday.) As for the allegations that these protesters must be paid operativesthey couldn’t possibly be sincere in their demonstrating outragethe smoking gun appears to be on an Indivisible web page offering reimbursements of up to $200 for any eligible expenses that local chapters incur during Musk-related protests. Keen observers of how money works may notice that a reimbursement is not exactly the same thing as a payout. Still, when an X user suggested that those supposed $200 payments to protesters are being funded by LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, Musk jumped in to agree, claiming the probability is 100% that Reid is funding them. (Hoffmans response: The probability many, many people don’t like you? 100%.) While Elon Musk cannot seem to imagine a world in which left-leaning billionaires are not paying off citizens to engineer a political outcome, he is simultaneously paying off citizens to engineer a political outcome. (A win for Musks preferred candidate in Wisconsins special election Tuesday could affect abortion and voting rights in the state along with, uh, whether a Tesla dealership will be allowed to open there.) Beyond the million-dollar checks he handed out Sunday, Musk is offering $20 payouts for anyoneeven those out of state, he explicitly mentionswho will help get the word out for his candidate in Wisconsin. Musks cash infusion in Wisconsin not only represents a continuation of his $270 million effort to elect Trump in November, which also involved hefty giveaways, but its a test run for the primary challenges hes vowed to fund against any Republicans who cross Trump. The irony is, part of what the Tesla protesters object to is the Tesla CEO using his vast fortune to influence politics. Musk keeps asking whos paying to fund these protests, when the simple answer is: Its him.
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E-Commerce
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