Every time I swear off writing about fashion something happens that sends me rushing to my laptop, fastidiously pounding away on a cat hair covered keyboard instead of starting on my four page paper on British poetry that’s due on Monday. Get your lint rollers and canned air out for this one; Gap’s Dress Normal ad campaign has me feeling all type of ways.
It’s not a shocker that the Gap has never been considered a fashion forward brand. You’re not going to snag a studded jacket or a minidress with sheer cutouts there, nor would you expect to. Some might call the brand’s no fuss, simple garments wardrobe staples, or basics, where others might call Gap a snooze fest.
So what’s the problem with basics? The word basic has taken on negative connotations in our pop culture; “basic” in slang terms means boring and ordinary, not exactly how you want to describe your dark wash jeans and fitted white t-shirt, is it? Enter Gap’s latest ad campaign, Dress Normal, which is riding on the heather gray coattails of normcore.
Normcore is a “new” way of dressing for the fashion elite- think Adidas slides with tube socks- that rebels against the recent fashion trends of dressing extraordinary- more on that in a moment. Normcore is rebelling against rebelling, but you have to rebel in the first place in order for normcore to make sense.
The problem with normcore is that it doesn’t take into account what people are wearing in cities that aren’t fashion hubs. In other words, your average dude from Kenner wearing Adidas slides with socks and a grey sweatshirt and a baseball cap is unintentionally participating in normcore. It’s plain dressing with irony, yet excludes that guy that doesn’t dress hipster cool from the inside joke.
Over the past few years the outrageous has been considered fashionable; the peacocks showing up at fashion weeks around the globe is a good example of this. Wearing a calf grazing tutu is the new norm, so how does one stand out in a sea of kookiness? The answer, apparently, is to dress “normal”.
Look, I kind of get it. Fashion celebrates the over the top, the glitzy and the downright bizarre. Iris Apfel is a household name for fashion insiders and Lady GaGa has given everyone carte blanche to dress outside of their comfort zone. When everyone wants to be a rare bird, however, this unique sense of individuality isn’t quite so individual anymore, is it?
But what is normal? That’s a subjective, potentially damaging word. What Gap really means is to dress simple, a bon chic, bon genre mentality (I’m giving them too much credit, really) that’s seeing a resurgence, albeit a resurgence through the hipster lens. According to Gap’s global chief marketing officer Seth Farbman, “Finding your own version of ‘Dress normal’ is an art. My normal is different from your normal, and that’s the essence of the campaign.”
Confused? That makes about as much sense to me as trying to explain what normcore is in the first place.
The problem with the Dress Normal campaign is that it indicates that anything besides normal is abnormal. It’s a backlash against creative dressing which, let’s face it, has put the hurt on Gap in the past few years, as well as other ubiquitous mall brands. It’s not cool anymore to be average, to fit in, but when everyone is trying to stand out from the crowd, where does that leave us? The best thing you can do for yourself is avoid the pitfalls of trendy dressing altogether and wear whatever the hell you want. Fashion is in a flux right now; I’d rather sit out and just focus on doing me, which is the best, most normal thing I can do.
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