Renowned fashion designer Zac Posen has been tapped to create new costumes for one of San Francisco Ballet’s beloved legacy commissions.

Posen, executive vice president and creative director of the San Francisco-based Gap Inc., is designing costumes for Christopher Wheeldon’s “Within the Golden Hour,” which will premiere its latest production at the War Memorial Opera House on Feb. 13 as part of the Ballet’s “Cool Britannia” program celebrating British choreographers. The work was commissioned in 2008 but its design is being reimagined in honor of Wheeldon’s 25th anniversary choreographing for the company.

“Dance has been a big part of my life, and I have huge respect for Chris’s work. It was a quick yes,” Posen told the Chronicle. “My first week in San Francisco, I visited the theater and saw the incredible quality of the dancers and of the company. It is one of the best companies in the world and it’s a really amazing honor to be able to collaborate with them.”

Posen, 44, has been among the most well-known American fashion designers of his generation for more than two decades. From 2001-2019, he ran an eponymous label and established himself as one of the go-to designers celebrities sought for dramatic red carpet fashion. Demi Moore, for instance, wore a custom look by Posen to the SFFilm Awards Night in December.

From 2013-17, Posen further established his pop culture foothold as a judge on the fashion competition TV series “Project Runway” and as the subject of the 2017 documentary “House of Z.” 

He joined Gap Inc. — the parent company of the Gap, Old Navy, Athleta and Banana Republic — in the newly created roles in February 2024, part of a strategy to reinvigorate the brands. As part of his first initiatives to connect the retailer to local creatives, Posen launched Gap Inc.’s partnership with Nest Makers United with the Nest x Gap Inc. Holiday Makers Market at Gap headquarters in December.

“Zac has an ability to make the body look extraordinarily beautiful and support and enhance the movement of dancers,” said San Francisco Ballet Artistic Director Tamara Rojo, noting that this new partnership is part of the company’s tradition of presenting costumes by significant fashion designers like Christian Lacroix and Gabrielle Hearst. “He is able to see movement and shape in a very similar way to how we do in the ballet world. I watched in admiration, when two masters like Zac and Christopher Wheeldon are in conversation they don’t need a third party.”

This is not the designer’s first foray into dance costuming. Posen has previously designed for New York’s Paul Taylor Dance Company and has a long relationship with New York City Ballet. Posen’s fiance, choreographer Harrison Ball, was also a principal dancer with the company and danced in ballets by Wheeldon. (Posen, who studied dance when he was growing up, said that Ball was frequently a helpful, in-house reference for Wheeldon’s style of movement as he was designing.)

Posen now divides his time between San Francisco and New York. 

The connection between Posen and the San Francisco Ballet came shortly before his appointment at Gap Inc. had been announced last year. Bob Fisher, a Gap board member and son of co-founders Donald and Doris Fisher, invited Rojo to a cultural event with the designer at Gap’s Embarcadero headquarters. 

“It just seemed like perfect timing to find an amazing designer at our doorstep for a project we already wanted to celebrate,” Rojo said.

Wheeldon’s original inspiration for the visual concept of the production came from the shimmering paintings of Austrian artist Gustav Klimt as well as the meeting of water, reflection and sky in San Francisco. Posen reinterpreted those motifs with dramatic orange, gold and rose ombre dresses meant to evoke the light of the city.

“One thing I took away in San Francisco and watching the ballet were these incredible colorations, kind of like the magic hours of San Francisco,” said Posen. “In all different parts of the city, there are these incredible, quickly changing, magical moments, there’s storytelling that happens in these short moments. 

“San Francisco is one of the most romantic cities in the world and has a mysticism to it.”

The collaboration with the San Francisco Ballet is among the latest projects that have brought Posen back to the forefront of the fashion conversation. In 2024, Posen designed for television, creating the gowns for the black and white ball episode of Ryan Murphy’s FX series “Feud: Capote.” That May, Posen highlighted the Gap’s iconic blue jeans when he created a custom denim gown for Oscar winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph to wear to the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Gala in New York. 

Announced Tuesday, Jan. 14, Posen has joined the board of trustees at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, an institution long connected to Gap and the Fisher family.

Reach Tony Bravo: [email protected]