The original fringed leather jacket (left) is next to the new version (right).
Photo: Courtesy of Liana Satenstein
Ellen tried on a few and they looked incredible. (BR, you should hire him as a model). In the mix, there’s blocky flannel, a white tee with ‘Banana Republic’ printed on the pocket, a geometric Southwestern shirt jacket, and a chunky Henley tee with a vintage BR logo. At first glance, many of these pieces looked like remakes, but there were some subtle changes: Western jackets had leather buttons instead of the original wooden ones. Other than these little details, everything feels like it’s truly been plucked from the past. As for the new arrivals and their prices, the money factor is great considering the quality is still top notch; that interesting geometric patterned shirt jacket is $100 Plaid flannel sells for $1979 . “Accounting for inflation, you may actually have less buying power now than you would have otherwise,” says Grady. good!
Another treat is the ultra-detailed illustration catalog, BR runs from 1979 to . Banana Republic stopped doing this at 1979 until 1979 and restarted for four years. “It wasn’t as successful because it [the catalog] was now photographic, not these beautiful hand drawings. The original BR was really focused on artistic quality, creative art actually,” says Grady. “They hired artists to draw and design a lot of these things. So when they started taking pictures, it was obvious that it didn’t look and feel the same.” The catalog is key to Banana Republic’s storytelling roots. After all, the label was co-founded by artist and writer Mel Ziegler and his wife Patricia. One description I admired from the catalog was about Banana Republic’s reissued “Impressionist Sweater”: “In making this sweater we used yarn the same way Monet, Sisley and Cézanne used paint: to reproduce light The shimmering effect in nature. So each ‘color’ is actually a palette of complementary shades—up to six shades in a single thick and thin cotton yarn.” That’s a real wardrobe poetry.
