July 17 2026
The brand taps into younger consumers’ appetite for nostalgia by recruiting one of its most famous members to remind them why 1996 was so great.
According to the Gap and Hailey Bieber, 1996 was a very good year.
To promote “The Hailey Jean,” a limited-edition collection of denim created in collaboration with the model and mogul inspired by its late ’90s styles, the brand released a spot featuring Bieber using various items from the era. As The Cranberries’ track “Linger” sets the musical tone, a narrator waxes poetic about the year 1996 while the camera pans across Bieber using CD players, landline phones and handheld cameras, before revealing the collection and the significance of the year — in which she was born.
While not as creatively striking as its previous work featuring Katseye and Young Miko, the spot, created by Bolded, the branded content studio of Fanatics-owned OBB Media that previously worked with Bieber for a Skims campaign, sticks to the brand’s clean aesthetic and effectively establishes an understanding of Bieber’s power among Gen Z and millennial consumers. It also shows how Gap can leverage both generations’ thirst for nostalgia for their brand.
