He Helped Revive Barbie at Mattel. Now Richard Dickson Is Trying to Do the Same for Gap

Richard Dickson made his name at Mattel, where he was part of the team credited with reviving Barbie, work that helped set up the doll's eventual leap to a hit feature film. He took over as chief executive of Gap Inc. in 2023, arriving at a company that had burned through five different CEOs over the previous five years and lost much of its footing in the cultural conversation.

Dickson has described Gap's core problem in blunt terms, arguing the company had drifted away from telling a real brand story and had become defined mostly by the products on its shelves rather than what the brand stood for. His answer has been to rebuild that story from the top down, starting with hiring designer Zac Posen as creative director across Gap Inc. and Old Navy, and leaning hard into the company's decades of archival imagery and heritage to reconnect with shoppers who grew up with the brand.

Celebrity partnerships have been central to the strategy. Gap has worked with Hailey Bieber, Victoria Beckham, and musicians Malcolm Todd and Inde Navarrette, while Old Navy struck its own collaboration with Cardi B around denim. The approach has produced some genuine viral moments, including a Better in Denim campaign built around the group Katseye that spawned a dance video viewed roughly 80 million times, along with a limited edition hoodie collaboration that sold through quickly.

Those efforts have started showing up in the numbers, with Gap's comparable sales rising 10 percent in the most recent quarter. Investors have been more cautious than the marketing buzz would suggest, with Gap Inc. shares down about 20 percent so far this year. Analysts describe the turnaround as still a show me story, one where Dickson has proven he can generate attention and short term sales spikes, but has yet to prove the growth and pricing power will hold up over the long run the way his earlier work at Barbie eventually did.