Old Navy is taking notes from its sister company Gap, borrowing one of its buzziest strategies of late: introducing designer collaborations. Its first? With Anna Sui.
If you've been noticing these staples of the American mall a bit more (or, at the very least, seen more headlines about them), it's because Gap Inc.—which owns Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, and Athleta—has undergone a changing of the guard in recent years. Richard Dickson joined as CEO in 2023, and hired Zac Posen as Executive Vice President, Creative Director and Chief Creative Officer of Old Navy in early 2024. Together, they've been working to further fashion-ify each brand's offering.
For Gap, that meant more collaborations (in the past year alone, it has launched capsules with Sandy Liang, Béis, and Dôen), plus a more elevated, celebrity-loved offering dubbed GapStudio. Old Navy gave us a taste of what the Posen Effect would look like when it rolled out an occasionwear edit earlier this year; it found its first hit, though, in its revamped handbag assortment for Fall 2025, which has been carried by celebrities ranging from Jenna Ortega to Emily Blunt. Now, it's fully leaning into the fashion with its first-ever designer collaboration, launching today.
Anna Sui with PinkPantheress, who stars in the Old Navy x Anna Sui campaign.
Old Navy's venture into this category—with Sui as its inaugural collaborator—comes from "a commitment to bringing style to a larger audience and to supporting American designers," Posen tells Marie Claire. The brand picked Sui not only because she's an icon in American fashion and her designs are imbued with a "sense of joy and fun and cool and whimsy," he says. "Anna's a girl from the Midwest, and I think that sensibility was really exciting to bring to our customers through the lens of Anna Land."
"I'm someone who shopped in malls, and really, really combed the fashion magazines to find the trends, to find what the next look was going to be, and then had to search it out. It was not that easy to find it," Sui says. "You do it by hook or by crook—can I pretend this is this, and put together your looks? Here, you've got it. You've got every piece you need with a lot of signature Anna Sui involved."
Anna Sui fans can find all her hallmarks throughout the collection: the purple, the butterflies, the vintage-inspired florals, the ruffles. The Old Navy team combed through the designer's archives, and pick out the silhouettes and elements that fit into the retailer's assortment for the season. There's even a fresh iteration on Sui's seminal "grunge dress," from her famed Spring 1993 grunge collection.
The original grunge dress on Anna Sui's Spring 1993 runway.
"It's so on-trend right now," says Sui. "Everybody wants the skirt. I mean, I couldn't wait to get mine."
Posen describes this as "a collector collection": "It's covetable, and it's pretty timeless. These are pieces you keep."
Her name is Pink, and she's really glad to meet you.
With these collaborations, he's learned to have a balance between the fashion and "our version of rock merch," he says. "You capture the essence when you do it, when I've done collabs myself in the past. You want to give the full feeling of it, because that's exciting."
Both Posen and Sui have worked with mass retailers on collaborations before. (They both were part of the Target 20th anniversary re-issue collection co-hort in 2019, having put out their original capsules in 2010 and 2009, respectively.) "It's all about the accessibility," Sui says, "the fact that people want this, but it's not always available to them. But here it is, and it's going to be so available everywhere, online or in stores. You can get that favorite piece, you can get that dress that you're going to wear to a wedding and then maybe wear it for special occasions. And I think it looks pretty good."
The Old Navy x Anna Sui collection features some of the designer's signatures, such as butterflies, vintage-inspired florals, and retro silhouettes.
For a designer, these collaborations allow them to design and produce in a way they might not be able to at their own brands.
"My company is really small," Sui says. "We're very limited. Some of these [techniques,] I have no access to. The fact that [Old Navy was] able to execute them this way and at the price points that they are is just amazing. For me, [the cost would] add a few zeros."
"We have an ability at Old Navy to do amazing materialization and bring style at an accessible price point, and that's just a very cool thing," Posen says. (Another thing he's learned at Gap, Inc.: "Don't skimp.") The collection is filled with design considerations that "once you try it on and wear it, you understand that it's not just a sweatshirt with a logo on it—there are details that give an attitude and a silhouette."
This mark's Old Navy's first-ever designer collaboration.
There's more to come from Old Navy on the designer collaborations front. "We have a few coming out," Posen teases. "It's really important that, as we move forward, they be special. They'll be paced, highlighting amazing talent and accessible style." As the roster grows, the brand's interested in "how collaborations can evolve for a customer."
Shop the Old Navy x Anna Sui collection
