BELOW AVERAGE
Two years ago Gap brought in Creative Director Rebekkah Bay to steer the brand, and then, suddenly, there were streaks of life inside the stores: capri pants cut from floral prints, denim shirts trimmed with pixellated borders, and shift dresses cut with an assertive minimalism, all in a palette of chalky pastels. While these pieces could shape a compelling story about understated modern dress, Gap is trumpeting their anonymity. Their Fall 2014 print ads feature actors modeling the most current clothes with the tagline “Dress Normal." It’s a campaign that’s been disastrous financially. No wonder. It breaks cardinal rules of American life and of fashion: that each one of us is special, and that what each one of us wears declares who we are.
The company’s PR positioned the campaign, bizarrely, as a call to individuality, but others see it as a stab at normcore. When delivered properly, by brands like Band of Outsider, normcore takes anonymous middle class clothes (button-downs, khakis, sweatshirts, cardigans) and reconceives them ironically (with tighter fits, higher hems, bolder prints), illustrating that the wearer has a heightened sensitivity to such matters. Slight eccentricities in style are amplified by knowingness. In comparison, the "Dress Normal” ads promote banality.
But the models, including off-center beauties Zosia Mamet and Anjelica Houston, are appealing, and the copy could have been tweaked to frame the images more richly. One shot shows Michael K. WiIlliams standing beside a fern-green Pontiac GTO, while a commerical plane takes off in the middle distance. The actor sports a greying beard, wears a wool baseball jacket over a white turtleneck, and twists purposefully away from the camera. He’s an unusually sober, enigmatic mannequin. He could be a contemporary anti-hero, taking pains to remain unobserved while waiting for an accomplice, an enemy, or a lover. Instead the ad presents him as an icon of conformity.