Wild Company

by Mel Ziegler

  By now we were traveling half the year in search of ideas and field-testing the clothing. Mel kept a journal of our travels, and I made sketches. We published these in the catalogues.

  The changing themes of the catalogue, the clothes, and the store displays followed our peregrinations. We flew to every continent except Antarctica to find fabrics, styles, and details of authentic heritage, all the while learning firsthand the sartorial needs of travelers. Everywhere we went, we dug in and involved ourselves with the local culture. The journals, which became the catalogue themes, went from “Rambles and Scrambles Around the English Lakes” to “On the Road to Mandalay”; from “Into the Amazon” to “Soviet Safari.” Mel’s musings jumped from page to page throughout the catalogue, illustrated by my watercolors. To read the entire journal, a customer would leaf through the catalogue, discovering the latest merchandise along the way.

  Random events during these travels sparked ideas that funneled back into the company, often in unexpected ways. Mel walked in on a maid changing the bed in a hotel in the south of France, and seeing the classic blue-and-white ticking on the mattress got the idea for a ticking shirt. Baskets of colorful spices in a Chiang Mai, Thailand, market enchanted their way into the fall palette. Mud cloths in Kenya morphed into a line of T-shirts and scarves. A market’s striped awning on Lamu Island suggested a design for a sundress. Igor Stravinsky’s image on a stamp prompted the idea to go to the Soviet Union in search of Russian military surplus.

  My notebooks filled with watercolor sketches: the buckle on the belt of a man in the Rome train station, Burmese men and women in lungis, and Aboriginal graffiti on a bathroom wall in Alice Springs, Australia. Peasant bundles inspired the shape of a purse; a Johannesburg witch doctor’s talisman, a necklace design. A Rio street vendor’s baggy cropped pants and wide-cut collarless shirt influenced the styles for summer. An old, faded picture of a woman piloting a bush plane guided the design of our women’s flight jacket. For color, smudges of ruddy Kenyan mud, salmon-colored outback earth, and rich Indian curry.

  Experience was a muse. Pursuing our frisky African guide on horseback at breakneck speeds through the forests on Mount Kenya gave Patricia the idea for a long-skirted Equestrienne Suit. The voracious mosquitoes in the Amazon prompted the mosquito net T-shirt. Fig Tree Camp in Kenya spawned an idea for a store design.

  Serendipity led the way. At a Paris flea market, we spotted an unusual Israeli paratrooper bag. That same night we were on a flight to Tel Aviv to find where it was made. Within a couple of months, it was in the catalogue.

  In Soviet Leningrad, our new friend Danny Grossman at the U.S. Consulate shepherded us through a bohemian underground of artists and musicians and into the bugged apartments of whispering Jewish refuseniks eager to send out stories of persecution by the authorities. On the High Holy Day of Yom Kippur we stood with Danny in the cold night outside the city’s only remaining synagogue, watching the worshippers file out, their faces eerily indistinguishable from the men and women in my grandfather’s synagogue in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

  Danny introduced us to the brilliant renegade artist Tolya Belkin, whom we commissioned to illustrate the cover for the Russian catalogue to be published upon our return. Our exploits did not go unnoticed by the KGB. Soon the television in our hotel room, which we had never even turned on, was being fixed by maintenance men at all hours, and we were being tailed by an ineptly surreptitious agent in a trench coat as if in a B spy movie. After being followed into restaurants and chased through the subway, we lost “Boris,” as we derisively named him, by directing our taxi driver at the last minute to make a sharp turn onto an expressway exit and head to a different Moscow airport, where we hopped on the next plane out. It happened to be going to Helsinki, Finland. Danny dispatched Tolya’s unauthorized catalogue cover in the diplomatic pouch. We published it to much excitement.

  In Florence, we stumbled onto an industrial uniform trade show and there got the idea that Italian cotton waiter’s jackets would make elegant summer blazers. Patricia ordered a few thousand of them on the spot, to be dyed in ivory, khaki, and navy. The awed manufacturer asked, “How many restaurants do you own?” At the same show, Patricia found a cotton auto mechanic jumpsuit and ordered it in smaller sizes for women who were adventurous enough to wear Ferrari mechanic overalls.

  In the Amazon, we camped on the jungle floor with a tribe of Indians who shared their monkey meat dinner with us and offered us the potent bark of a native tree to chew as a stimulant. They made Patricia an iridescent beetle necklace that became her hatband. In the Ecuadorian jungles, with a missionary’s son as our guide, we took a dugout canoe down streams and tributaries filled with crocodiles, water snakes, even piranhas, to reach remote tribal lands in search of rarely seen indigenous designs. We slept for three restless nights in the jungle on a stilt veranda, wakened by rustlings, mosquitoes, howler monkeys, and the cries of other creatures of the night. The last night, with the rain slamming the palm leaf roof and falling in sheets over the sides of the veranda, we awoke at dawn. We’d both had the same dream about a snorting jaguar sniffing at our head. In Peru, we braved Shining Path terrorists, with each breath roaring in our ears in the oxygen-thin air of fourteen-thousand-foot passes, reaching Machu Picchu four days later. Climbing the neighboring peak, we caught an up-close glimpse of an Andean condor, its ten-foot wingspan momentarily blocking out the sun.

  In Australia, we rode camels to Ayers Rock and made hot tea over an open fire to cool down in the 125-degree heat. Thirsty flies filled our ears, climbed into our noses, dove into our tea—and our open mouths. On the way home, we cooled off sloshing through four days in the wettest spot in the world, New Zealand’s Milford Track. In Burma, traveling by dhow, rickshaw, and rickety Fokker planes with open back doors, I swapped my Casio watch for antique hand-carved marionettes. Patricia traded her dress for a sarong and an embroidered jacket. In Mandalay, it was safe to brush our teeth only with beer.

  Weather was always a challenge, especially for carry-on travelers like us. One garment had to serve varying conditions. During a trip to the Australian outback, chilly mornings gave way to scorching afternoons with nowhere to change, so I cut off our pants above the knee with my Swiss army knife, a mistake I deeply regretted when the mosquitoes came out after sundown. So came the idea for the Kenya Convertible pant, which zipped off or on at the knee. In countries that the British had once colonized, a tweed sport coat was a handy piece of clothing to have for its pockets, warmth, and easy panache. This led us to Savile Row to work with tailors on prototypes of a British wool sport coat. However, we found its construction too heavy; its stiff formality was not our brand. It began to show promise only when I tore out the carefully stitched-in horsehair interfacings, shoulder pads, and silk linings. Then we further softened the shoulders, bound the exposed interior seams, and added leather details and elbow pads, resulting in the classic-looking Traveler’s Sportcoat that was as comfortable as a sweater. We sent it to Hong Kong to be manufactured in Donegal tweed wool.

  And pockets, always pockets, a traveler’s best friend. Appreciation of pockets started early. Mel was always jamming too many things into his: notebook, wallet, newspapers, keys, camera. I favored pockets over pocketbooks too, conscious of how shoulder bags disturb posture. When it was hot, we wanted pockets without sleeves, so we created a Mesh Portable Pockets Vest. Most popular was the Bush Vest, which we made in several colors of pigment-dyed cotton, and also a cognac-colored leather. Mel described it in the catalogue as “a walking desk with a drawer for everything.” Our Photojournalist Vest, designed with the guidance of Time magazine photojournalist Matthew Naythons, became a staple for photographers the world over.

  Whenever we passed through Paris, a must-stop was the flea market at Porte de Clignancourt—officially called Les Puces de Saint-Ouen but known to everyone as Les Puces (the Fleas). There we found a shirt of cool blue. The two patch pockets, cuffs, and collar were handstitched at the edges. It draped over my ar
m like fine silk. I checked the label: men’s S, cotton and rayon, made in the U.S.A. Not natural, not French, but we bought it anyway. I wore it out to dinner that night with my Serengeti Skirt, feeling a bit of a traitor to my natural-fiber credo, but I was smitten.

  “So make it in cotton,” Mel said.

  “Won’t drape the same,” I answered glumly.

  “Well, what is rayon anyway?” and he looked it up.

  Turns out, rayon is a seminatural fiber manufactured from cellulose. That was enough to ease my conscience. We reproduced the blend in Gauloise blue, aubergine, and cafe creme, and named it the French Cafe Shirt “in honor of the Francophiles of the past who sat for hours discussing Proust over un café crème on the Boulevard Saint-Michel.” The painter Ed Ruscha reviewed it, enamored of the colors. “My shirt is a very nice shade of gray-blue, with even a little purple in it,” he wrote.

  The catalogues allowed us to share the excitement of all these travels and discoveries. They were whimsical mashups of merchandise, theater, adventure, and literature. Theater, particularly, was what we had in mind in designing and creating the set inside the stores that became the backdrop to display the clothing. The clothing itself, of course, had a costume quality about it—part of its attraction.

  The catalogue was the road map for the business. It set the tone; it set the theme; it set the timing. Traveling as much as we did, except for my journals and Patricia’s sketches, we entrusted the catalogue to the savvy journalist (now novelist) Meredith Maran, who, sizing up the job as “a big playground,” brought it to a new level. She worked to seamlessly integrate the voice and vision of the business. Every piece of copy and every drawing was fussed with until it was perfectly “Banana Republic.” By this point the company had established its own ethos and singular personality. I liked to put a glass or a pencil in the middle of the table at meetings and declare, “That’s Banana Republic. It’s our job to listen to it.” I thoroughly enjoyed working with Meredith and others, including the elegant writer Nancy Friedman as editorial director, and Louise Kollenbaum as art director. Their playfulness and their fresh bright minds expanded Patricia’s and my vision and made the catalogue better than ever.

  Meredith wasn’t kidding about the playground—she loved pushing up against its fences and lost no opportunity to do so, challenging the limits (digest size, all hand drawings, each item perfectly rendered in name, picture, and word) of the catalogue. No one in the creative department had ever worked a “real” job before. Every writer hired was a virgin to the world of business. Other than their writing, or doing odd jobs on the side to support their writing, until recruited by us they had never even imagined themselves working for a big “corporation,” particularly in creative positions. They were fiercely independent, would not tolerate bullshit, and seized every chance they had, or could invent, to push things. In the latter regard, the puckish Meredith was the poster child. She sat me down one day and sternly lectured me about the name of the company. Was I aware that “banana republic” was “a disparaging imperialistic term”? I conceded that was one way to look at it. “But there isn’t much I can do about it anymore except take Banana Republic off your paycheck,” I told her, and we each had a good laugh.

  The den mother to this pack of rascals was the talented Bonnie Dahan, who performed the impossible task of managing the creative department and keeping the playground safe.

  From 1985 through early 1988 the catalogue grew exponentially, to a point where we mailed thirty million annually.

  With the catalogue preceding them, stores opened in city after city every few weeks. In almost no time, we were at thirty-five stores, and by 1986, approaching sixty-five. We were signing new leases weekly, and projecting to have more than a hundred stores opened by the end of 1988. By definition, Banana Republic had become a “chain.” However, that word, indeed the very idea of “chain store,” grated on us—in fact, horrified us. So in spite of the number of stores we had grown to, we were determined to keep a chain store mentality out of the company. But how do you make a chain not a chain?

  23

  Size Matters

  The first line of defense against creeping chain mentality was to be sure that no two stores looked alike. Chain stores replicate the same design in every mall, one of many economies of scale that help them keep their costs down and their profile ubiquitous. We, on the other hand, wanted every store to be a unique shopping experience that suited its locale. Also, because chain stores are synonymous with mall stores, we preferred to build our stores on vibrant shopping neighborhood streets rather than in malls. This, however, was not an idea that Don Fisher shared.

  Don was becoming increasingly interested in the company, visiting every few days, calling with suggestions or questions, dropping in on Ed Strobin to take the pulse of the operations. When it came to siting stores, I learned, autonomy wasn’t exactly autonomy. From his Gap headquarters in San Bruno, twenty minutes away, Don was now directly taking charge of selecting locations. I began to see he was using Banana Republic as a chip in negotiating with malls, leveraging us for better deals and better spaces for his Gap stores in the same shopping centers. I didn’t mind. He knew the lay of the real estate business, was a master lease negotiator, and wanted to see us in top-end locations. Despite our preference for street locations, malls were where the business was in some cities, and Don knew exactly the malls where we’d do best. The leases started rolling in: South Coast Plaza in Orange County, the Galleria in Houston, Short Hills Mall in New Jersey, Water Tower Place in Chicago, Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston, Tysons Corner Center in Virginia.

  While Don busied himself on the malls, I scouted street locations, and we opened stores as well on Newbury Street in Boston, Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Grant Avenue in San Francisco, Bleecker Street in New York, and Main Street in Westport, Connecticut.

  Architect Russ Levikow was well up to the challenge of designing the stores, deriving inspiration for authentic elements and details from photos and sketches of our travels. The goal in designing our stores was to transport customers into the state of wonder and alertness that simulated the travel experience. They might enter under an arch of elephant tusks, the canopies of tented camps, or tin-roofed jungle shelters and emerge into museum-quality dioramas with trees, wild animals, planes, and jeeps. The clothing was shelved in crates, hung on tree branches, folded in piles on the back of a jeep. Now in the second decade of the twenty-first century, such store design has become a self-conscious category known as “themed” retailing. But in the 1980s, when most stores were selling clothes on racks and shelves inside four sterile white walls, it was fresh, groundbreaking, and fun.

  In the urban street locations, the storefronts became embassies, old hotels, and colonial outposts, each store evoking an apocryphal history with crests, signs, and seals. Inside, rustic floorboards were strewn with handwoven rugs, and walls were covered with African masks, sketches, and engravings. Furnishings such as incandescent lamps, antique armoires, and zebra print upholstered wingback chairs took the customer back in time. There were often tusk door handles, caged light fixtures, shutters, stone fireplaces, and lattice ceilings with a painted sky above.

  Every store, whether a tent, a lodge, or an embassy, featured unmistakable traces of an adventurous wordsmith. These included a story in progress on a slightly yellowed sheet of paper in an old Royal typewriter, located on a rock or an antique rolltop desk. Next to it were wire spectacles, a fountain pen, a tin canteen, a few coins, and a half-finished mug of coffee. And in an unabashed and shameless pitch of commercialism, the mysteriously absent writer’s safari jacket could always be found hanging nearby on a tree branch or over the back of a chair.

  We saw staffing as our next line of defense against falling into a chain mind-set. Whenever possible, we hired free-spirited and personable young people, particularly those who were creative or in creative professions: writers, actors, and artists, for instance. This worked not only because they were the kind of p
eople naturally drawn to the style of the clothes but also because, given the nature of what they did for a living, many appreciated a day job. Their independent air spoke to the theme of individualism that we promulgated in the brand. In training the sales staff, we emphasized the importance of performing as local shopkeepers do, greeting and treating customers as neighbors, and participating in the community.

  We expended considerable effort to keep the staff well informed so that they could be helpful to customers. The creative department produced a new video timed to the mailing of each catalogue to keep store personnel up-to-date on the lore, functions, fit, and styling of each new item, as well as to train them in how to assist customers in personalizing their travel wardrobes depending on their destinations.

  The store culture reflected the company’s: we were all about creativity. Everything in every store mattered—from how a collar was turned in a window display to the way customers were greeted when they entered the store. Trite greetings such as “Can I help you?” or “Is there something special you’re looking for today?” were never heard. Salespeople made a sincere personal connection, if possible and appropriate, or were sensitive to customers who wanted to be left alone. Customer service? Every garment was guaranteed forever.

  The staff were encouraged to share stories of their own travels. As a company, we were all about stories, visually and narratively, which inspired customers to share their narratives with us. Stores filled with fascinating conversations, as customers brought tales of their travels and told of their unique experiences in the clothes. The feeling in the stores was playful. Customers loved combining their own idea of themselves with a new idea of themselves that the clothes suggested. When a customer tried on a pith helmet or an aviator’s jacket, his personal narrative might take a whimsical turn into fantasy, and the actor or writer waiting on him would be right there to join in. Besides these flights of fancy, there was always the thrill of spotting the many celebrities who frequented our stores—tacit endorsements that this was the real thing.