Not a soccer mom

It’s going against the grain to say nice things about the Gap right now. The company just booted out its CEO and has a few financial headaches.

But I’ve always had a soft spot for the Gap (or The Gap as it was known when I first discovered it). Growing up in Brussels the choices for clothes shopping as a young woman were fairly limited — stuffy department stores with snooty sales assistants or chi-chi boutiques with even snootier sales assistants.

Later, when I lived in London, shopping for clothes always seemed like an ordeal: the horror of Oxford Street, all the schlepping around that was involved, the lack of good taste and good value in one place.

My first memory of Gap was when I visited my sister who was living in Boston in the 1980s. I fell in love with the whole concept of bright, clean stores with helpful staff and good quality, basic clothing. Over the years I remember buying a jeans jacket that was too big (that’s how we wore them then) and jeans that did nothing for my figure. Also piles of nice cotton T-shirts, a natty little raincoat that a bona-fide Sloane Ranger admired in Chelsea years afterwards; summer skirts and soft hoodies. I lapped it up. It was all so easy and such a stress-free experience.

The first Banana Republic I set eyes on was a revelation too. It was in Cambridge, Massachusetts I think, and was relatively new as a brand, and quite different to what it is today. The store had a jungle theme to it, with palm trees and bamboo everywhere, a desert jeep parked among the Safari suits… all very exotic.

Then, when I moved to the States, and before my older son got savvy to designer labels, we relished buying $1.99 appliqué T-shirts and bundles of cheap socks at Old Navy for the kids.

At some point, though, I grew out of Gap, or vice-versa, I’m not sure which. The clothes became too trendy and/or grungy for me — since when do skinny jeans with fur trim look good on anybody I ask you?

So when the chain announced the launch of Forth & Towne, the Gap concept tailored to “women of a certain age” I was suitably excited. (Glossing over the fact that the shop’s acronym spells FAT.) This would be the answer to all my sartorial anxieties.

The trouble is I haven’t got around to visiting the San Francisco store yet, which only opened a few months ago. And now I hear it and the other F&T stores are all closing.

Great. What do I do now? Gap is letting me down and I will continue to never have anything to wear.