By Fictional Value
Revisiting Banana Republic’s mail order catalogue and Trips Magazine.
Before Banana Republic went through numerous rebrandings and transformed itself into the anonymous store that it is today, it began as Banana Republic Travel & Safari Clothing Company. Their lavishly decorated safari-themed stores sold military surplus and pocketed linen shirts across the malls of America throughout the eighties. After opening their first location in Mill Valley California in 1978, their stores quickly became ‘exotic destinations’ in their own right, complete with life-size fiberglass elephants and tropical foliage.
With the introduction of their mail order catalogue, they added an additional layer to the dream of traveling to a faraway destination. Open your mailbox and immerse yourself in a repertoire of khaki, dark brown, tan and sand—the colors of every season at Banana Republic.
“Fashion is so self-serious. Ads rarely have any copy and fashion is very image driven, it doesn’t really explain,” says fashion critic Rachel Seville Tashjian. In contrast, Banana Republic’s catalogue was run by two journalists from the San Francisco Chronicle, Patricia and Mel Ziegler, and the premise of it was to explain. Contrary to typical photo-heavy product-grid catalogues, Banana Republic’s version featured hand-drawn illustrations of the garments accompanied by written backstories about the clothes, both made by the couple. After selling the company to the Gap in 1983 (under a deal that let them maintain all creative freedom) they were able to print more catalogues. In order to keep their advertising budget to a minimum, they opted for well-known customers to review garments in the catalogue. Before the era of celebrity endorsement, authors, actors and playwrights wrote for Banana Republic: ranging from Nora Ephron on the ‘All-Night Flightsuit’ to Paul Theroux on ‘Globetrotter bags’. Anne Rice wrote about the French naval cape: “When I took it out of the box, I knew it was mine. Any self-respecting vampire would adore it.” The witty reviews rapidly gained attention, and as told by Mel Ziegler in Wild Company, one author even received more compliments on his reviews for Banana Republic’s catalogue than all of his books. Overall, the catalogue’s language was playful and travelogue inspired.
On every level, Banana Republic was trying to sell an imaginary experience. After recognizing that customers were keen readers who were interested in the mail order catalogue, the retailer launched a Banana Republic Travel Magazine and opened ‘Travel Bookstores’ across numerous locations. Here they offered hard-to-find travel books, maps, and language guides. Following this success, the retailer also expanded into magazine length advertorials. Their in-house publication Trips, which never made it past the inaugural issue, was released in the Spring of 1988. Contrary to their travel magazine, Trips sought to publish travel journalism independent from Banana Republic, and they therefore hired Caroline White as an external editor. Bob Fisher from the Gap was skeptical and viewed the project as a detour: “What does a magazine have to do with clothes?” he responded.
For the Zieglers, building Banana Republic was about placing their ideas within a wider cultural context and “elevating clothes to a starring role in our lives.” Layers of both irony and humor hid behind their Jimmy Buffet-esque store displays, which led to Banana Republic’s success. “The self-seriousness of fashion often happens hand-in-hand with this kind of bloatedness of fashion brands. They begin taking themselves really seriously, like they are totally out of touch with what the average person is thinking about and that keeps them from having a sense of humor, which is a very innate human thing to have,” says Tashjian. Although Banana Republic received attention from mainstream fashion magazines such as Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, they didn’t take themselves too seriously and continued to detach themselves from the fashion world. Their approach was about more than just travelling, it was also about a curiosity towards culture at-large, similar to what many fashion brands are doing today.
Something interesting happened in Banana Republic’s gradual transition to what it has become today. From doing everything short of recreating the set from Out of Africa (1985), to its full-on rebranding to understated, mid-range luxury, it was always about making their brand accessible to the masses. They gradually let go of their adventurous storyline, which they had successfully sold to teenage New Yorkers who flocked to the Banana Republic universe on Bleeker and Sixth in search of their very own 1940s-style leather bomber jacket. Through the years, and with the eventual opening of a flagship store on Fifth Avenue in 2015, a building that could easily be mistaken for a bank, they have come full circle in their attempt to sell the lifestyle that Ralph Lauren became famous for.