At Gap’s headquarters in San Francisco, an archive dedicated to the apparel company’s 57-year history features nearly 6,000 boxes of memorabilia documenting the retailer’s brands, which also include Old Navy, Banana Republic and Athleta.

There are prints from photographers like Annie Leibovitz and material related to many celebrity ad campaigns, like Missy Elliott and Madonna for Gap and Cindy Crawford for Old Navy. Those dated back to the retailer’s heyday, when malls were full, celebrities wore the brand on red carpets and Gap stores were plot points in sitcoms like “Seinfeld.”

When Richard Dickson started as Gap’s chief executive nearly three years ago, he was awed by those archives and set out to change the conversation about the company.

Gap had spent years closing hundreds of stores across the United States, as sales flagged and profits were patchy. Its stock, which peaked in 2000, was languishing. The company took more than a year to fill the C.E.O. position.

Mr. Dickson, who spent nearly 20 years at Mattel, brought with him a playbook that had helped revitalize the toymaker’s brands like Hot Wheels and Barbie. He got Barbie to the big screen, with star power and a marketing machine that produced blockbuster financial results.

The native New Yorker speaks excitedly about the ways that fashion, entertainment and music are intertwined. He went to Coachella last month and has been to the Oscars in recent years. He often mentions how Gap’s first store, which opened in 1969 in San Francisco, sold records, tapes and jeans.

Mr. Dickson’s culture-focused strategy is taking root. For his creative director, he hired Zac Posen, who dressed Kendall Jenner in a Gap gown for the recent Met Gala. Gap has made toe-tapping ads featuring Katseye and Parker Posey. Mr. Dickson even hired another C.E.O. — a chief entertainment officer — to oversee the company’s push into content, licensing and Hollywood.

Gap’s comparable sales have risen for eight straight quarters, and its market value has increased to $8.5 billion, from $3.6 billion when Mr. Dickson started. Last year, Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic posted sales increases, with only Athleta recording a decline. Gap’s namesake brand showed the strongest growth.

Mr. Dickson, 58, credits the turnaround to “being aware of pop culture, content, art, theater, music, entertainment.” If a brand makes sure that those themes come through, “you become more relevant,” he said.

This interview was edited and condensed.

As you try to bring Gap back into the cultural conversation, how are you managing your time? Are you spending more time in Hollywood?

As our business evolves, my allocated time also changes.

When I first got to the company, we were in “fix mode.” It’s no secret. My time was 100 percent spent on the operations, the financial rigor, setting up strategic priorities and editing a lot of the noise in the system that can be very distracting for a turnaround.

Over the course of three years, we’ve emerged a better company. Now we move into the next phase, which is to build momentum. My focus, while not taking my eye off the operational discipline, moves more into how to accelerate our growth.

I have a multitude of meetings and time spent with the entertainment community, which I’m very familiar with from previous roles.

When you were hired from Mattel, the chatter was that you would try to recreate the Barbie magic. Is that true, or is there a different strategy for Gap?

It’s actually the same playbook. It is not so much that the playbook is unique; it’s the methodology and the execution that’s unique.

The playbook is, first, identifying what’s our reason for being.

You could put me on any brand in the world. Why do you exist? What is our purpose? What’s our point of difference? Those simple questions have very complicated answers when you’re in a turnaround. If you can’t answer it in a sentence or two, or one or two words, you’ve got a problem.

Old Navy is different from Gap. Gap is different from Banana. Banana is different from Athleta.

So let’s focus on Gap. What makes it distinctive?

When I look at the history of every one of our brands — it wasn’t dissimilar to the Barbie conversation — what was it that broke through? What was that single thing that made it so incredibly relevant?

In our case, it was a store that was all-inclusive before inclusivity became a word, because we sold jeans for all races, all sizes, all sexes. We bridged the generation gap in the experience through music. Music was the connective tissue in the context of the store experience.

Let’s get back into that music narrative with great product storytelling and amplify it in a way that is relevant for today’s consumer. We started with Jungle with our linen campaign. We moved to Troye Sivan with a great music video around the baggy and loose trend. Then, of course, the blowout with Katseye.

These aren’t ads. Yes, you see the fleece because it looks incredible. But nobody’s saying, “Oh, my God, it’s a great deal with a great price.” They’re saying: “Did you see this? Did you feel this?” That is when you get emotional connection to a brand.

We had become more about price than product. More about stuff, not storytelling.

If you’re focusing on entertainment, how do you measure success?

We have dashboards everywhere. I think we just turned one off when you walked in because our business flashes on an hourly basis on my screens.

We have dashboards that measure brand love, people searching more for our brand and brand attributes that we test and roll out to see how consumers are feeling.

Does the focus on entertainment hedge against all of the uncertainty in the world?

To some extent, in the world that we live in, we should be that great distraction in some cases, that pleasant place that you love to go to. That ultimately makes a brand stronger, to essentially navigate more complex times. There’s always something that we have to worry about.

How worried are you about consumer spending? We’re in California right now. I passed a gas station where it was about $6 per gallon.

That was a good deal.

Most retailers say that consumers remain resilient, but are you prepared for spending levels to drop?

We have a fantastic portfolio that addresses all income cohorts.

We have quality products that should last, in some cases, for generations. You’re buying it for the long haul. But we do recognize that we need frequency: We need to stay fresh. We need to stay new.

There are a lot of businesses that will start to pull back on quality, right? We’re not.

You’re from New York City, right? Tell me about your upbringing.

My parents were both in retail, real estate and fashion. My mom was more on the creative side, and my dad was more on the financial and operations side.

My grandparents were also in fashion and retail. They were Holocaust survivors. My grandmother sewed and had her own line in department stores. My grandfather ran the factory, so they had a small business that did very well. I remember growing up and running around the factory floor.

What’s a piece of advice that you received that you still reflect on today?

Retail is detail. There’s not a single day where everything goes right, but at the end of that day you could still say that it was a great day.

Ultimately you’re firefighting on a minute-to-minute basis. You’re constantly in motion. That sense of detail orientation is probably an attribute that’s carried with me from my earliest days in the industry.

It’s time for the lightning round. What’s on heavy rotation on your music playlist right now?

Who I really like right now is Sombr. I saw him at Coachella.

What’s the last thing you asked A.I.?

To decipher an object that somebody sent me from a museum and I wanted to know which museum it was from.

How often do you check Gap’s stock price?

I probably check it twice a day. I do a morning check and at the end of the day.

When you need to feel most confident, what are you wearing?

I love our hoodies, and not only our fleece hoodies at Gap but Banana Republic’s cashmere hoodie. Depending on the vibe, I would go with a fleece or cashmere hoodie. Then I usually throw on a Banana Republic trucker jacket.

I wear all of our brands. I have worn a few sweatshirts from Athleta.

If you had to explain each of your brands in exactly one word, what would it be? Let’s start with Old Navy.

Family.

Gap?

Individuality.

Banana Republic?

Adventure.

Athleta?

I’m going to go with empowerment.

President Trump’s wide-ranging campaign to punish his perceived media critics has come for newspapers like The Wall Street Journal, The Des Moines Register and The New York Times; broadcast outlets like the BBC, NBC News and CBS News; and the late-night hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert.

But now it is bearing down on a new opponent, one that remains politically potent and has a storied place in Mr. Trump’s oeuvre of media grudge matches — the long-running ABC daytime talk show, “The View.”

The Federal Communications Commission has been quietly investigating the program for months, looking into whether “The View” violated old federal rules requiring equal airtime to rival political candidates. The inquiry could also feed into the agency’s wider review of whether ABC should be allowed to continue to own some of the country’s most important local television stations.

The clash between ABC and the Trump administration could lead to a protracted, high-stakes legal battle over free expression. The network asserts that the F.C.C. action could have “a chilling effect on First Amendment-protected free speech on the eve of the 2026 elections” and affect which political guests — if any — talk shows will book.

The central role of “The View” is testament to the enduring influence of an old-fashioned broadcast television program that the ABC anchor Barbara Walters started 29 years ago, describing it “as a kaffeeklatsch with more caffeine.” People in both parties say the show continues to hold significant political power — even as streaming, podcasts and social media take up more attention.

“The View” draws 2.7 million viewers a day, more or less the audience it has had for a decade, according to Nielsen.

“It would be easy for our side to say, ‘Who watches that junk?’” said Tim Graham, a senior leader of the Media Research Center, a conservative group that has long been critical of the show. “But the answer is: Many people.”

Representatives for “The View” declined to comment, or to set up interviews with the hosts or anyone involved in the production.

Ms. Walters’s intention, as she said on the premiere episode in 1997, was to make the show destination viewing for a broad swath of women “of different generations, backgrounds and views.” The show’s panel has long included a conservative presence to balance the progressivism of its longstanding hosts Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg.

Mr. Trump, who was good friends with Ms. Walters, used to be a regular guest, once seeing the show as a great platform to promote himself, his business and his family. During a March 2006 appearance, Mr. Trump, sitting next to Ivanka Trump, notoriously mused, “If Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.” (“Who are you, Woody Allen?” Ms. Behar blurted, sending Mr. Trump into a fit of laughter.)

Weeks later, Melania Trump gave the show her first interview after the birth of her son, Barron, revealing details about the delivery (“very, very easy”) and informing viewers that Mr. Trump had elected to stay out of the delivery room. Sometimes Mr. and Mrs. Trump even appeared together: In 2010, they made a joint appearance when Mrs. Trump promoted her QVC jewelry line.

But “The View” also set the scene for a foundational Trump feud — with the former host Rosie O’Donnell, starting in 2006. She called him a “snake-oil salesman”; he called her “a slob” and worse.

The final break in the relationship between the show and Mr. Trump came shortly after he entered politics. He clashed with Ms. Goldberg over his description of Mexicans as “rapists” in 2015, and he declined invitations from “The View” thereafter. He made 18 appearances in all.

The hosts became more critical of Mr. Trump over the past decade, and he attacked them back. The two Republicans on the panel — a first-term Trump spokeswoman, Alyssa Farah Griffin, and the longtime strategist Ana Navarro — are frequent Trump critics. And the anti-Trump critics are even tougher.

“It is unbelievable to me,” Sunny Hostin, a host, said this week, “that there are still people — despite the fact that they don’t have health care, despite the fact that the Department of Education has been gutted, despite the fact that they can’t afford to buy eggs — they are still with their guy.”

Conservatives accuse the show of interviewing mostly Democrats. This spring, the Media Research Center released a report titled, “The View Kicks Off Midterm Year With 27 Liberal Guests to 1 Republican.” (The study included celebrities in its tally.)

In its filing with the F.C.C., ABC noted that guest appearances did not reflect the full range of invitations. The network said the show had invited numerous Trump allies over the past two seasons, including Vice President JD Vance, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Senator Lindsey Graham, Elon Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — all of whom declined.

ABC’s lawyers said bookings were “based on newsworthiness, anticipated audience interest and their potential to ‘make news’ on the show.”

The administration has escalated its attacks over the past year. In July, it released a statement rooting for the show’s cancellation, after Ms. Behar compared Mr. Trump unfavorably with former President Barack Obama.

The seriousness of the F.C.C.’s inquiry into “The View” came to light when ABC responded forcefully to it this week. The agency is looking into whether the show was improperly operating outside longstanding broadcast rules requiring entertainment programs to provide equal airtime to candidates for the same office.

ABC’s lawyers noted that “The View” had received a news exemption from the agency in 2002 and that the exemption had not been challenged in the 24 years since.

Their response, which became public on Friday, accused the F.C.C. of violating the network’s First Amendment rights and indicated that they were prepared to take the case as far as the Supreme Court.

The network maintains that the mix of its guests should not be the government’s concern. “Of course, government officials are free to express their own views about ‘The View,’” ABC’s lawyers said in the filing. “But they cannot utilize the coercive powers of the state to punish viewpoints with which they disagree.”

The show has long been under a political microscope, not only because of what its hosts say but also because of the makeup of its audience.

The two highest-rated media markets for “The View,” according to Nielsen, are Philadelphia and the Flint-Saginaw-Bay City market in Michigan’s industrial corridor — both in swing states. The show also draws strong audiences in Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Chicago and New York, Nielsen said, as well as in West Palm Beach, Fla.; Kansas City, Mo.; and Hartford, Conn.

That audience is made up of a prime voting demographic; two-thirds of its viewers are 65 or older, and nearly 90 percent are over the age of 50. Seventy percent are women. And 60 percent of its viewers are white and a quarter are Black, according to Nielsen.

“Women are one of the most important swing segments of the electorate,” said Daniel Suhr of the Center for American Rights, the conservative legal group that in March urged the F.C.C. to deny “The View” an exemption from the equal-airtime rules as a “bona fide” news program.

Having hosts who “constantly bash the president and the party” on a show that draws such swing voters, Mr. Suhr said, “has a real effect on our politics.”

Lis Smith, a Democratic strategist who has long seen “The View” as an important stop on any major candidate’s campaign schedule, said she thought conservatives were mainly picking on the show to whip up the faithful against a favorite media target. But, she added, “The View” does have its uses for Democrats.

“They reach a large audience of women, and Democrats need women to turn out to vote to win,” she said.