Filling The Gap -- Successful Clothier Fits Right In With The Cost- Conscious '90S

To see just how successful The Gap is, ask yourself these questions:

Do you know anyone, excluding very recent Albanian immigrants, who doesn't know what The Gap is?

How many pieces of clothing have you bought from The Gap in the last year? The Gap is so successful that the prince of understated (and very pricey) chic, Giorgio Armani, has just launched a chain of in-store shops called A/X Armani Exchanges that are upscale imitations of The Gap. With jeans costing $80 and up, and denim jackets at $165, Armani Exchanges are clearly not wooing price-conscious Gap customers, who've gotten used to paying $38 for Gap jeans and $50 for denim jackets. But Armani is describing his new line as "nuts and bolts" apparel. That's his twist on the fashion industry's sudden interest in "getting back to basics," industry jargon meaning jumping on The Gap bandwagon.

Dayton Hudson, the powerful Minneapolis-based retailer that owns Target discount stores, has announced plans to open a chain called Everyday Hero, an attempt to sell Gap-style jeans and khakis at discount store prices. And mail order catalogs including J. Crew and Tweeds have been offering "basic" T-shirts, jeans and khakis in updated fashion-forward colors for several years in the same price range as The Gap.

Imitation may be the highest form of flattery, but in the fashion industry, it is also a strategy for survival. At a time when designers, apparel manufacturers and retailers are suffering sluggish sales as recession-minded consumers save instead of spend, one of the brightest spots in the business is The Gap, whose stores sold 13 percent more in 1991 than the year before, a stellar performance in a year when most retailers felt lucky if sales didn't drop.

And while other retailers and some designers are going bankrupt or downsizing, The Gap is opening stores fast and furiously. San Francisco-based Gap, which also owns Banana Republic, now has 1,200 Gap stores nationwide, including 12 in the Seattle area. The chain now also is opening GapKids and babyGap stores, which feature pint-size versions of much of the same cotton knit and denim apparel sold in grown-up Gaps. Seattle gets its first GapKids and babyGap in April at Southcenter Mall.

With the move into children's wear, Gap fashions seem destined to become the uniform of the '90s for the whole family.

"The guts of their success is that they've really struck a chord with the way people are thinking these days," said Norman Karr, executive director of the Men's Fashion Association in New York. "The Gap is kind of a populist Ralph Lauren, and at a time when everyone is talking about getting back to basics, The Gap has come at exactly the right time with comfortable stuff that's affordable."

Sociologists have been predicting for several years that the excesses of the '80s are giving way to a new Zeitgeist of frugality and traditionalism. A/X Armani aside, they say that the days when even affluent Americans were willing to pay $75 for jeans with a designer label on the hip pocket have gone the way of the two-martini lunch and his and hers BMWs. That makes Gap apparel, which is free of insignia, logos and exterior labels, right in step with the new disdain for conspicuous consumption.

Several years of trend-setting advertising also helped establish Gap wear as apparel that even celebrities would proudly wear. In the late '80s, the company hired photographer Herb Ritts to shoot a series of stylish black-and-white portraits of celebrities - ranging from jazz saxophonist Branford Marsalis to writer Joan Didion - wearing Gap apparel. Though the company has moved on to new campaigns showing clothes alone or worn by models, the celebrity campaign was a clever bit of reverse snobbism and was imitated by others.

Ironically, for a company whose philosophy is basically an anti-fashion chic, The Gap sets trends.

"They really do a great job with the chambray denim shirt, which is now nearly universally accepted as an option to wear with a jacket and tie," said Chip Tolbert, MFA fashion director. "I'll pair a Gap T-shirt with an expensive linen suit because the Gap colors are so good. I also wear a wonderful linen jacket which I got for $100 at The Gap with a $200 silk shirt I own, which I did not get at The Gap, and it looks great. I just think they do a wonderful job of constantly offering fresh merchandise."

Rebecca Ray, a Seattle women's apparel designer, credits The Gap with "looking at what people really wear. I shop at The Gap. They've got T-shirts in every single color in the world, they're cheap and they're a great street look."

Frequent shoppers know that The Gap restocks its stores with new merchandise in new colors and styles about every two months and that old merchandise is quickly marked down by 20 to 30 percent. A team of Gap designers creates new merchandise a year in advance. It is manufactured offshore to exacting specifications. The apparel generally gets high marks for quality.

"The Gap does sophisticated coloring, has good prices and very good quality," said Jan McLauglin, a Seattle wardrobe consultant. "They really do their research. I get pieces there. A windbreaker I wear all the time is from The Gap."

Gap stores this month are featuring a color palette of subtle blues, mustards, dusty rose, olive, gray and black. It is a far cry from the standard red, white and blue T-shirts and turtlenecks offered year after year by several less fashion-oriented companies. The Gap is also quick to fill fashion gaps. Currently it is selling women's size T-shirts with short cap sleeves and delicately finished, rounded necks that don't gape - welcome feminine adjustments to the basic T-shirt fitted for a male torso.

The Gap also is now stocking what it calls "reverse fit" jeans. These are large waisted jeans meant to be cinched in with a belt like a paper bag. The style has been popular among teenagers in Europe for several years but is just now spreading to the U.S.

Most fashion observers say The Gap's ability to jump on trends, modify them for real people, manufacture them inexpensively and sell them in attractive stores means that the company will not likely be hurt by imitators.

A few say that The Gap may eventually become a victim of its own fashion success. "Nothing lasts forever," Alan Millstein, publisher of the New York-based "Fashion Network Report" newsletter, recently warned in Women's Wear Daily. "One day, people are going to get tired of seeing themselves coming and going in the same clothes and that's going to be it."

Others - like Donald Fletcher, owner of the Seattle menswear shop Uno - believe that Gap fashion appeals primarily to younger shoppers. But then Fletcher admits that when he does venture into a Gap, he usually finds what he wants.

"A couple of years ago I was looking for a striped T-shirt for a nautical look, so I went in and they had it," Fletcher said. "It was just right, and I think it was under $20."