The American Set Tips
Who Wore What When

Gap's Vintage Year Is 1996, and the Look Was a Website

· 1 min read
Group of diverse fashion models posing in elegant evening gowns on luxurious staircase indoors.
Photo by Felix Young on Pexels

For a desk that dates everything by designer and season, here is a fresh entry for the archive: Gap counts 1996 as a landmark year, the moment the American retailer took up the newest tools of its day and opened its first online shop. The company is now revisiting that chapter as it brings artificial intelligence into its business, treating the old milestone as a point of comparison rather than a keepsake. Call it a double-exposure portrait, one frame from the dial-up era and one from the present, with the same brand in both.

With reporting from WWD.

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