Sometimes the best campaigns come from watching someone else fumble.

This summer’s fashion cultural-positioning race proved exactly that, with Gap slipping into the spotlight as the cool, collected winner of a drama they didn’t even start. 

Who did then? Here’s the lowdown.

An Innocent (?) Pun Sparks a Firestorm

It began innocently enough: American Eagle picked Sydney Sweeney (the very definition of all-American blonde) for their denim campaign. The hook was a wink-wink pun: Sweeney has great jeans/genes.

But in today’s media swirl, a pun like that lands differently.

What should have been a cheeky one-liner spiralled into a cultural Rorschach test. Critics sniffed eugenics undertones, whispered oversexualisation and rolled their eyes at yet another riff on Western beauty ideals.

Overnight, Sweeney’s denim campaign became a flashpoint for debates about bodies, politics and history. The echoes of Brooke Shields’ infamous ‘80s Calvin Klein ads are impossible to ignore, almost teasingly on the nose this time. 

Shields was just 15 when she delivered that provocative line about what came between her and her Calvins, sparking outrage over the sexualisation of a minor before the ads were pulled. Like American Eagle’s playful genetics wordplay, Calvin Klein’s campaign walked a razor’s edge between suggestive and scandalous, using messaging that courted controversy as much as customers. That American Eagle would invite the same comparisons decades later hints at either tone-deaf execution or a calculated risk in an industry that never forgets how scandal can sell.

The backlash snowballed. Headlines ran, politicians chimed in and American Eagle held its breath for nine days of silence. Many saw it wasn’t oversight, it was calculation. Stocks climbed, then slid, leaving a sour taste.

Enter Gap

Their campaign Better in Denim landed amid controversy across denim campaigns, planned or not, we’ll never know. 

Where American Eagle went singular in focus, Gap went plural.

Instead of centring one Hollywood actress, they enlisted KATSEYE, one of the first successful global girl groups with members from the Philippines, South Korea, Switzerland and the US.

Gap skipped the gene puns and served choreography, community and Kelis’s Milkshake, making the low-rise jeans comeback feel nostalgic yet not cosplayed. Still, Better in Denim isn’t criticism-proof. Some write it off as surface-level inclusivity since attractive people in jeans hardly spell revolution. Reddit burns hotter with comments like “Gap is incapable of making a bearable commercial” or “Gap wants to sell jeans to bad-dancing douche bags.” 

Yet compared to American Eagle’s misstep, Gap’s move feels refreshingly airy. It is loose, light on the feet, selling energy over empty controversy.

Denim as a Blank Canvas, Not a Billboard

Gap’s move feels chic because it refuses to shout politics. No manifesto slides. The message lives in casting, choreography and the collective visual. Denim becomes a blank canvas, not a billboard.

While American Eagle’s campaign tried too hard to make a point, Gap simply showed. The dancers layered, moved together, and embodied difference without labelling it.

Evil or Angelic Timing?

By arriving just after the chaos, they turned American Eagle’s mess into their moment. The campaign feels responsive and not reactionary.

Post-2020, authenticity isn’t just being “real” but being inclusive, expansive, genuinely tuned in. Winning brands carve space, not noise.