Making a pair of jeans is as artisanal as making a gown,” says Zac Posen, the American fashion designer, in a vast Manhattan boardroom. It might not have been a sentence the now 44-year-old would have uttered when he was stitching intricate leather gowns while studying womenswear at Central Saint Martins in 1999, nor in the years after, when his eponymous label boomed and he became one of America’s best known figures in fashion thanks to his sculptural red carpet looks and penchant for draping.
However, the best thing US culture has brought to the world “is this idea of reinvention and self-invention and self-creation,” he continues. So when we speak, he is shamelessly enthusiastic about his current, rather grand, role: executive vice president and creative director at Gap Inc.
