Shopping at the Carlsbad outlet mall.
Does anyone remember when Banana Republic stores used to be cool?
Around 1987 there was one in Pasadena that had a parachute and half a Land Rover in the front window. (Yeah, the Rover hooked me, what can I say?) My girlfriend would make a special trip to Pasadena just to go there. The stores looked cool and they had cool clothes — real travel adventure clothing, the “Hemingway look.” Lots of loose-fitting dirt-colored linen and cotton. They had an image, and an attitude, that made me pleased to shop there.
Then it got bought by the Gap and perverted into another foo-foo garbage mall store.
I stopped in at the Carlsbad outlet mall yesterday to see what BR was up to. I actually bought a shirt that might have even been sold in the old store. But the atmosphere? It’s the Gap. Bleh. No personality whatsoever.
Compare that to Timberland next door — I walked out with two pairs of shoes, shorts, and socks. The place had personality. Cool rolling metal fixtures you could rearrange in minutes. Benches to sit on and try on shoes (duh). Stuff that looked like actual work gear, even if you didn’t want it.
The spiritual successor to the old Banana Republic is probably J. Peterman — the catalog that Seinfeld immortalized — which still uses illustrations instead of photos and still has writers who can string a sentence together:
“I recommend this ankle-length linen sundress because it will give your companion something to ponder without revealing too much right off the bat. Even a glimpse of calf can cause unseemly behavior, sometimes followed by sunstroke.”
That’s a catalog that knows what it is. BR’s current homepage, when I checked: “new looks we crave for summer…shop now” next to a lipstick’d model.
No one could accuse me of being a clothes horse. But I still like to identify a little with the places I shop.