Banana Republic

A Safari Catalog Before It Was a Chain

The original Banana Republic was a two-store safari and travel-themed clothing company, and the majority of sales came from its eccentric catalog, which presented high-end and unique items with chatty, usually fictional, backstories from exotic locations, as well as more pedestrian high-volume products spiced up with a similar treatment. The company competed directly with the J. Peterman catalog. As Banana Republic expanded its retail operation, it became known for themed decoration in its stores, often featuring authentic elements such as real Jeeps and foliage, as well as atmospheric elements such as fog and steam. That founding identity was a narrative one: the products were travel clothing, but the catalog stories and the store theatre were the product as much as the garments, which is why the definition spends as much space on backstories and Jeeps as on the clothes.

Acquired by Gap and Rebranded as Casual Luxury

Gap Inc. acquired Banana Republic in 1983, eventually rebranding it as a mainstream luxury clothing retailer. The eccentric tourist-oriented items were phased out and replaced with the casual luxury items for which the brand is currently known. For a time, Banana Republic ate into Gap's consumer base; to set itself apart from Gap as a more upmarket brand, Banana Republic occasionally buys and refurbishes historic buildings for its retail locations. That last detail preserves one piece of the original theatre inside the mainstream format: the store building itself is still used to signal character and standing, even though the safari merchandise inside it is gone. Within Gap Inc., the brand sits above Gap and Old Navy as the group's casual luxury chain, a positioning expressed in the product, the prices and the buildings.

Scale, Sizes and Franchising

Today the company operates over 400 Banana Republic stores in the United States, including Puerto Rico, and 24 stores in Canada, and it has recently opened 2 stores in Tokyo, Japan. Two stores in 1978 had become more than four hundred in one country. Banana Republic offers clothing in women's regular and petite sizes as well as in men's, and recently some men's stores were converted to sell petite sizes as well — an allocation change that shows petite sizing being given dedicated space previously used for menswear. It has also recently signed franchising deals in Malaysia, Singapore and the UAE, extending the chain beyond its North American and Japanese stores through local operators. The definition therefore records a full transformation: founded by Mel and Patricia Ziegler as a safari catalog, acquired by Gap Inc. in 1983, and rebuilt as an international casual luxury chain.