Black Retail Action Group

excerpt from Mike Albo's New York Times Article:

I HAVE rarely seen someone as crazy and as determined as the Italian mother who jostled me in the Gap flagship store in Midtown. She bumped into me as she snatched up a pair of tan cargo pants. She went over to her teenage son and threw them at him. He exhaled furiously — the international sign for “God, Mom, whatever!” — and went to the dressing room. Then, to my right, a Frenchman wheeled a baby carriage onto my foot until I moved out of his way.

There must have been 100 Europeans in this store: men wearing sweaters tied around their shoulders, women wearing sunglasses inside, entire families chattering and pointing. All of them had rapacious looks in their eyes because they knew time is money. They needed to buy as much as possible before the increasingly global financial meltdown turned their powerful euros into a currency as pathetic as, well, the United States dollar.
But ... Gap? At first it was difficult to understand why the Eurofolk were so intense about this place. It leaves the bland taste of the 1990s in my mouth. I see the square blue sign, and it calls to mind Helen Hunt on “Mad About You,” sitting on a puffy couch in comfy khakis and a big, shapeless chambray shirt, holding a huge mug of tea with both hands. When Gap was at its peak of influence, Seinfeld was a style icon. Blech.

But Gap is on a mission to lure us back, hiring the sharp, youthful designer Patrick Robinson to revamp the line. His designs started showing up in stores last spring. Maybe the Eurofolk are on to something.

Walking into the giant store, I could see the revamping effort. The space was brightly lighted, cool music was playing, huge photos of Hugh Dancy and the sexily scarred hockey star S. Avery were on the walls, and the mannequins wore hip outfits in layered combinations I wanted to wear — especially one tweed jacket, sleeves pushed up.

A lot of the merchandise invites you to try it on right there on the floor, like a warm charcoal cable knit cardigan ($138), a leather bomber ($298) or a hip-length cargo jacket on sale for $49.99. This was a total of about 360 euros, and if I were a literature grad student visiting from Strasbourg, I would have bought all three and then gone home and worn them while smoking loose tobacco cigarettes and reading Houellebecq.

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE