The US billionaire Donald Fisher has died, leaving a wife, Doris, three sons, ten grandchildren and 1,478 branches of Gap.

Gap Inc, the parent company, announced the death of Mr Fisher, who was 81 and had cancer, yesterday. Its chief executive officer, Glenn Murphy, said that Mr Fisher had “changed the face of retail for ever”. This is not entirely empty corporate rhetoric.

The Fishers opened their first Gap jeans shop in 1969 and the chain now employs 134,000 people worldwide. No-logo chinos, polo-shirts, T-shirts (with a breast pocket, Gap’s first trademark garment) and jeans were the sartorial fundamentals reinvented by Gap into a covetable yet affordable uniform for the masses.

Its popularity peaked in the Nineties, when Gap insinuated itself into the forefront of popular culture. Some of this publicity Gap paid for: its celebrity campaigns have starred the singers Madonna and Missy Elliot, and even Marilyn Monroe (in khakis). Much of the publicity, however, was based on goodwill. Gap had a happy knack for precisely articulating the dressed-down yet preppy aspirations of first the baby-boomers and then, reluctantly, Generation X.

In Reality Bites, the seminal 1994 slacker film starring Winona Ryder, one of the characters worked at Gap. Two years later Sharon Stone brought Gap on to the red carpet when she wore a $22 black Gap turtleneck among her Armani and Oscar de la Renta-clad peers.

Away from the glitz, though, the ethos of Gap is basics. Burt Flickinger III, a US retail consultant, said yesterday: “Americans would not be able to afford well-made clothes at the low prices and highest possible quality that they have today if it were not for what Don started.”

Gap’s model also exported well. The company came to Britain in 1987 and there are 137 Gaps in the UK, challenging retailers such as M&S and Bhs.

This decade Gap’s fortunes have waned somewhat. Part of Gap’s problem is its success; the white walls and stripped-floor shop model has been aped across the retail industry, from Apple to American Apparel.

So, too, have its quirky everyman advertising campaigns. Retailers including TopShop (UK), Zara (Spain), H&M (Sweden) and J. Crew (American, and guided by Millard Drexler, the former Gap president) have remixed the Gap model, prospered and threatened its market share. As well as the Gap stores, the parent company also controls 1,622 branches of Banana Republic, recently introduced to Britain, and the American discount basics brand Old Navy.

Despite this brand diversification, Gap’s raison d’être — those basics — eventually provoked consumer fatigue, and in 2001 sales slumped for the first time in more than a decade. As the character Joey fumed when he saw Ross wearing the same Gap shirt as him in a 2004 episode of Friends: “Stupid Gap on every corner.” Later, Gap got back on track and is still near the top of the fashion retail pile.

Mr Fisher stepped down as the chief executive of Gap in 1995, but remained chairman of its board until 2004. Earlier this year he was quoted as telling his shop managers: “I look at running a store and running a business as playing a game. And what to you do when you want to play that game? You want to win.”

Gap in the market

1969 Don and Doris Fisher open Generation Gap in San Francisco

Mr Fisher’s preferred name was "Pants and Disks". Mrs Fisher demurred

1976 The Gap goes public on the New York Stock Exchange

1986 The first GapKids shop opens in California

1987 Gap exports its preppy sales pitch to Britain. The first British shop opens in Richmond, southwest London. Nine more branches open by the end of the year

1990 BabyGap is born in San Franciso

1992 Gap hits trouble. The company Gap is exposed for (unwittingly) selling subcontracted clothes produced by Chinese labourers in a Saipan Chinese sweatshop. The subcontractor is fired; Gap’s reputation is tarnished

1996 Sharon Stone presents an Oscar in a $22 (£14) Gap turtleneck

2006 Gap goes designer with Roland Mouret —its debut UK first British designer collaboration

2009 Gap enters the bag market, collaborating with Mulberry

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