Knock-offs: The Banana Pocket

I’ve had this shirt in my collection for awhile and just didn’t know what to make of it. Patricia Ziegler has identified it to be a knock-off not made by Banana Republic.

It’s a very mysterious item and I don’t quite understand what the point of making it was. It’s not like a Gucci handbag or Ralph Lauren sportcoat, it’s a fairly average cotton shirt.

It’s a well-made, soft, 100% cotton shirt and it SEEMS to have the correct Banana Republic Star and Bananas Mill Valley logo tag. However, it has this odd little tag on the left shirt pocket that simply says “Banana” in a different font than is used in BR branding. This is out of line with what BR ever did. As Patricia told me: “We never put out label on the outside of garments. We didn’t believe in asking our customers to be our billboards …(except for printed t-shirts which we felt were in a different category).”

Also odd is the manufacturers label, which resembles some made in India tags with the size in a circle, but instead of naming a country of origin it says “Baumwolle” which is not a place but a German word for a type of cotton (according to the internet).

After the discovery of the Knock Off BR Sweater I’m left to wonder how many items we find that are not in the catalogues are in fact forgeries?!

Let’s look closely at the labels: I was fooled by the collar tag, but now that I look much closer I can see the give-aways. The comparison below shows the forgery on top and a legitimate label (from a price-tagged shirt). First, note that there is only a bit of space between “Mill Valley” and “California”. On legitimate labels the space is bigger and aligned with the oval shape. Secondly, the Bananas are much “rounder” on the forgery. The legitimate tag has thinner bananas in a more oval shape. The proportion of star to bananas is all different. As to the color, I think it’s less definitive. There is still a LOT of variation in embroidered Banana labels, but in general they are a yellowish green and have a bit of a metallic sheen to them. Still, this is a pretty convincing label at first and even second glance. This level of forgery, if that’s what it really is, is unsettling given the number of items we come across that were not in the catalog. That would mean that everything that can’t be verified is suspect. Still, we know from the employee newsletter that there were some items that had in-store only color variations for instance, so not being in the catalogue doesn’t automatically disqualify a piece, but this definitely makes it more difficult!

I’m not sure what the final word on this really is. It’s an odd item for BR to make under any circumstances, but it’s also a strange thing to bootleg.