Designer Zac Posen Has Fallen Hard for San Francisco
Now at the helm of one of America's most classic fashion brands, Zac Posen talks about relocating to San Francisco and embracing his new hometown.
“San Francisco is physically, I believe, one of the most beautiful cities in the world,” says Zac Posen, the beaming creative director of Gap Inc. A local attraction that has particularly resonated with him, though, is a little more abstract: Ellsworth Kelly's iconic Blue Green Black Red painting, which once belonged to Gap founders Doris and Donald Fisher and now hangs inside the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art . “[The first time] I sat with these Ellsworth Kelly [panels], I was like, ‘This is the Gap color story of my childhood,’” says Posen. “These art pieces existed in the headquarters of Gap for many years. That's my ‘boo-hoo’ because I'm like, ‘I want to live with this incredible art.’”
Posen takes in the angel's-trumpet blooms near the Filbert Street Steps in Telegraph Hill.
This invigorating vibrancy and Frisco flair is seeping into Gap Inc. as we know it today. The clothes, whether they're from Posen's elevated Gap Studio or cheerful Old Navy, are tailored yet relaxed and effortless, and sometimes boast searing saturations. He brings up a flamboyant striped chunky turtleneck sweater from 2001 and says that he is releasing his own Zac-ified reissue. There was also that fantastical ROYGBIV addict Christopher John Rogers x Old Navy collection this past April. And when Posen worked on his first Met Gala as the brand's creative director, with actor Da'Vine Joy Randolph in 2024, he designed her a denim gown in crisp light and dark blues, inspired, he says, by the coloration of San Francisco Bay. (This year he dressed Kendall Jenner in a winged twist on the classic Gap white tee.)
Whether on the street or at the office, Posen is excited by the unbridled sartorial creativity in San Francisco, from the loud to the demure. Yes, there are sometimes public displays 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 style. He describes going to the opera and wondering what people'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 personal style evolution by way of SF: “I've never worn more linen in my life!” What more could you expect from a Gap guy in the easy, breezy City by the Bay?
