Husband and wife Donald and Doris Fisher founded The Gap in 1969 in San Francisco, California. Nowadays Gap is the parent company of Banana Republic, Old Navy, Athleta and Forth & Towne. It is truly a behemoth of fashion, with over 135,000 employees and 3,500 stores worldwide. Even though the company has far outgrown its humble origins, the Fisher family are still very involved in its management and control a large stake of the company.

After seeing fashion retailers in his district regularly selling out, Donald Fisher (a commercial real estate broker by training), thought there was an opportunity to meet an unfulfilled demand and created a plan to launch The Gap. The name refers to the ‘generation gap’, a difference of understanding between generations. They struck a deal with Levis to exclusively stock their products if they would guarantee that The Gap would never run out of stock with overnight deliveries if necessary. The fact that The Gap guaranteed they would always have your size available meant that customers flooded in and would be greeted with just Levis and LP records. This was the perfect mix to attract young customers from the nearby City college, and it wasn’t long before they started opening more stores.

1974 marked a huge step forward for The Gap, as they launched their own private label. This helped Gap grow beyond jeans and LP records into a whole range of apparel. But to start with they created their own jeans and corduroys. After globally expanding, Gap decided to refresh the product line by working with businessman Millard Drexler and although they enjoyed much success with him through the 1990s, a 2 year slump in sales, and disagreements with the Fisher family led to them parting ways. GAP has a history of working with celebrities as ambassadors, and recently have caused a stir by collaborating with Kanye West in 2021. Kanye West even involved Balenciaga and Demna Gvasalia in designing the collection. And although Gap has been mired with accusations of exploitation of workers and resources, it has made some efforts to clean up its.

Iconic GAP Advert where LL Cool J Secretly Advertised FUBU (can you spot how he does it? Ps. It’s not just the hat…)

How to tell if GAP is vintage from the logo

The global reach of The Gap means that its logo has proliferated all over the world. For quite a few years the logo was simply used outside of its stores as it only sold Levis. But as they started to sell their own clothes the logo started to be used on tags and designs. So, by observing changes in the logo, we can start to narrow down an era to see if your Gap is vintage. On a side note, Gap tried to introduce a new logo in 2010 to modernise the brand, and after a swift public backlash they reverted to the old logo just one week later.

1969 to 1986

• The original The Gap logo is a simple text logo
• It is all lower case
• The font is smooth and rounded
• And ‘the’ is above Gap at an angle
• It is monochrome
• In 1976 a minor adjustment was made and ‘the’ was straightened out

1986 to 2016

• Known as the Blue Box logo, it says Gap in a square blue box
• The font has serifs
• It is white and all uppercase

2010

• Whilst this was only the official company logo for one week, it has still been used on a number of different tags and designs
• Only the G is capitalised
• And a blue box covers the top right of the ‘p’ in Gap

2016 to now

• After the debacle of the previous logo update, Gap decided to make only a small alteration
• They removed the box from behind the word Gap
• The lettering also became slightly more spaced out

How to tell if GAP is vintage from the neck tags

So, once you’re done cross referencing Gaps logo history with your item of clothing, you can narrow it down to a 15 year period, but to help whittle it down further, you can compare the tags. But just before you do, you should bear in mind a few things. Gap that is made in the USA is mostly vintage as Gap moved their production offshore in the early 1990s. Another is that tags with pixelated text that has been sewn in tend to be vintage as this was the primary method used in the 1980s and 1990s by Gap. The inverse of this is that if that tags have information that has been printed on, it is more likely vintage, as is the case with many of their recent t shirts and sweatshirts. So, without further ado, here are the tags.

Can’t figure out your vintage tags? Submit a picture on our vintage tag identification page, and we’ll help you identify them!

1970s vintage GAP tags

• The original Gap tags were large rectangles with just the logo
• Other information like sizing and composition would often be included on an extra tag
• The logo is sewn in and is slightly pixelated
• They were either completely sewn in or sewn in on the sides

1980s vintage GAP tags

• The shaped became rectangular and would have the new Gap Blue Box logo
• Many of the tag were Blue
• Some of the tags started to include information in multiple languages as they internationally expanded
• And offshore production begun in countries like Hong Kong

1990s vintage GAP tags

• Many of the Gap logos became squares, essentially being fabric versions of the Blue Box logo
• Product information like sizing and country of manufacture was included on an additional tag
• Lines like Gap denim would run in the 1990s
• Midway through the 1990s the tags were slightly updated, with the spacing between the lettering being slightly more spaced out, although this was not an officially logo update

2000s vintage GAP tags

• A whole slew of different tags came out in the 2000s
• Early 2000s tags were often doubles, one which had the logo and a second next to it that has the sizing and composition information
• Later 2000s tags were often fully sewn in with small sizing tabs attached to them

2010s vintage GAP tags

• Whilst the 2010 logo was quickly rejected and reverted, it was still used on many tags
• They would be fully sewn in, and have very small sizing tabs with information for multiple countries
• Some of the tags started to become white loop tags with the information printed on
• Some neck tags started to be printed on the inside of the top as well

How to tell if GAP is vintage from the wash tags and production code

The main restriction with the above methods is that they only really allow us to get an approximation of a how old a vintage Gap piece is. What if you want to know exactly what season and year it was produced in? Well on Gap pieces from the late 1990s onwards, a small polyester tag behind the main tag has a code that states the ‘SU’01’ in the example below, which mean the piece is from Summer 2001. The only flaw with this method is that these tags are often flimsy and come off the garments, hopefully, you’ve still got one on yours.