{"id":13800,"date":"2021-06-18T15:02:02","date_gmt":"2021-06-18T15:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.secretfanbase.com\/banana\/?p=13800"},"modified":"2025-09-04T01:21:04","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T01:21:04","slug":"banana-republic-goes-vintage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.secretfanbase.com\/banana\/banana-republic-goes-vintage\/","title":{"rendered":"Banana Republic Goes Vintage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The Ellery Knight illustration<\/a> of the Bombay Shirt was used in the previews for this project. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

ON June 17th, 2021 Banana Republic launched “BR Vintage”, selling actual vintage BR clothing from the 1980s and 1990s. A most unusual development, they selected items from the same sources we collectors do: eBay, Etsy, Poshmark, etc and resold them on their website at astonishing markups. A Hooded Bush Vest for $175, a Bombay Shirt for $119, worn T-Shirts for $80, Women’s Traveling Boots for $229, used Israeli Paratrooper Briefcase for $229 and leather jackets for $500. Everything sold out nearly instantly. The website said it’s a “limited time capsule” and I view it mainly as a marketing campaign to activate nostalgia and emphasize their origins. I don’t expect them to take over the vintage market, though I do worry a bit these prices will affect what sellers ask for vintage items. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

From High Snobiety:<\/a> “Deeply inspired by Banana Republic’s timelessly out-of-time catalogues, Andjelic and a team of “purveyors” went through the archives to select 225 unique vintage pieces from the ’80s, ’90s, and early ’00s. Ranging from classic hunting jackets to graphic tees and caps, the BR Vintage selection is indicative of the worldly ethos that inspired Banana Republic’s founding.
“Banana Republic was created as an imaginary territory on par with Narnia, Middle Earth, or Wakanda,” Andjelic said. “Our archives are this chest of curiosities that takes us to another imaginary world … a caravan route in a desert, an abandoned campsite, a forgotten forest. We wanted to deliver the modern customer this imaginary world that started it all with a resolutely modern vibe. Some stuff in our vintage store is so camp that it\u2019s cool and other is timeless streetwear.””<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From GQ<\/a>: “And now, the mall stalwart Banana Republic is undergoing its own transformation\u2014a process that begins in earnest Thursday, with the launch of\u00a0BR Vintage<\/a>, featuring 225 vintage products from the brand\u2019s \u201980s and \u201990s golden period. The idea, Ana Andjelic, who joined the brand just four months ago as chief brand officer, is that even if Banana Republic seems a little staid now, it used to be pretty cool. \u201cIf any brand dropped this today, it would be super modern,\u201d she said in a Zoom call earlier this week. \u201cIt\u2019s better than anything Banana Republic has done in the past ten years. It\u2019s before the Mickey Drexler metrosexual phase,\u201d she said, referring to the retailer who led Banana-owner Gap in the 1990s before taking off to overhaul J.Crew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andjelic said in part they were inspired by the response that the brand\u2019s early history elicited on Instagram: \u201cEverytime you post something on Instagram\u2014like a catalogue or a sketch of the old clothes\u2014people go nuts. It\u2019s literally the fabric of these people\u2019s lives.\u201d Still, while vintage brands are all over the platform\u2014is there any brand in American fashion whose early 90s campaign and catalogue images Instagram users haven\u2019t dug up to celebrate?\u2014Banana Republic\u2019s bygone luster is less well-known than that of, say, old Ralph or J.Crew. You have to wonder if that might actually\u00a0help<\/em>\u00a0the turnaround: since there\u2019s some real novelty to the idea of \u201cvintage Banana Republic,\u201d the company avoids looking like it\u2019s just responding to secondhand market pressures. (Although, Andjelic told me, \u201cOur stuff on Depop is, like,\u00a0lit<\/em>.\u201d)
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ON June 17th, 2021 Banana Republic launched “BR Vintage”, selling actual vintage BR clothing from the 1980s and 1990s. A most unusual development, they selected items from the same sources we collectors do: eBay, Etsy, Poshmark, etc and resold them on their website at astonishing markups. A Hooded Bush Vest for $175, a Bombay Shirt […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13803,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.secretfanbase.com\/banana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13800"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.secretfanbase.com\/banana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.secretfanbase.com\/banana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.secretfanbase.com\/banana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.secretfanbase.com\/banana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13800"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.secretfanbase.com\/banana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13809,"href":"https:\/\/www.secretfanbase.com\/banana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13800\/revisions\/13809"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.secretfanbase.com\/banana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.secretfanbase.com\/banana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.secretfanbase.com\/banana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.secretfanbase.com\/banana\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}