Recently I was browsing on the Gap website and something hit me: a khaki edit with styles that struck me as being reminiscent of the product selection of the late 1990s Gap khaki rollout and subsequent Gap khaki campaign.
Allow me to back up. It does not get better than vintage Gap commercials from the latter half of the 1990s. Musicians (hello, Lena Horne, Aerosmith, Luscious Jackson, LL Cool J, Junior Brown, Missy Elliot) kicked off the television spots, which lead to a series of commercials that premierd during the Oscars featuring khakis through different lens of musical genre (soul, rock, country, swing, 60’s), which then lead to some of the most iconic commercials forever engrained in popular culture. The Everyone In… campaign directly influenced my back to school wardrobe then, and beyond. Gap commercials reached an apex in the three part West Side Story campaign for the colored jeans and neutral khakis. It features the Jeans dancing to America and the Khakis dancing to Cool and a dance off from both gangs to Mambo! There is even a behind the scenes feature on YouTube.
Though the West Side Story commercials are considered the superior of the bunch, I have a soft spot for the khaki campaign featuring soul, rock, country, swing, and 60s. The lattermost is my favorite; the choreography is just so good. These days you can find the same exact styles in the Gap online store as this, and all of the commercials from the campaign. I pulled available styles based upon each commercial, below:
Gap khaki groove
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Gap khaki country
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Gap khaki swing
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Gap khaki soul
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Gap khaki rock
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Gap khaki a-go-go
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