Because old GAP clothes are exploding on the used market

As you know, the quality of clothing is decreasing year by year. So much so that even fast fashion pieces from several decades ago seem particularly qualitative compared to what is produced today (apart from rare exceptions such as Loom and Patine Paris). But perhaps even a little more creative, if we look at GAP vintage garments. While the brand is going through major financial difficulties and threatens to disappear, its archives look even more desirable and see their ratings skyrocket on second-hand sites.

Because the GAP from the 80s to 2000 was the pinnacle of cool

THE Keeper notes as well as on the Depop resale platform, search for ” vintage GAP they increased by 114% in June. On eBay, the number of items sold with the hashtag ” Y2KGAP (read: since the 2000s GAP) has more than doubled in recent months. The American brand founded in 1969 was particularly popular in the 80s and 90s. Supermodels of the time even wore them head-to-toe for the cover of the magazine’s 100th issue. US Vogue in April 1992 (photographed by Patrick Demarchelier). It was therefore the pinnacle of cool, worn by Madonna as well as Joan Didion, but also by Madame tout-le-monde, thanks to her well-cut basics, designed to last and within everyone’s reach.

Like GAP it fell out of use at the turn of the 2010s

Gold GAP would start sinking from the late 2000s, as the claw would start trying to want to become a designer brand. Starting with the engagement of Patrick Robinson in 2007, arrived from the catwalks of European luxury such as Giorgio Armani and Paco Rabanne. Thus, inevitably, his vision quickly clashes with the casual style so in vogue in the United States and which had decreed the success of GAP until then. During the 2010s, the brand therefore lost popularity: the value of its shares dropped from 4 billion dollars at the beginning of 2019 to 2.3 billion at the end of November of the same year. All of his UK stores closed in 2021, while his collaboration with Kanye West, announced with great fanfare the same year, was finally terminated following the artist’s racist and anti-Semitic statements.

GAP threatened with extinction? A hype enhancer, let’s see

In addition to this story, it is all mid-range fashion that is collapsing in the West, even in France where GAP pales in comparison: in receivership since March 1, 2023, Gap France was finally bought by Spodis in May 2023 for 300,000 euros, saving 214 jobs out of 336. It is in this extremely tense context that the brand’s vintage pieces regain their desirability, the threat of extinction can act as a hype enhancer. So if you have any relics of the American brand sleeping in your closets, now might be the time to put them up for sale on Depop, Vinted and other Vestiaire Collectives. Cap or no gap?

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