Knock-Off Coat of Bananas Sweater

I picked this sweater up on eBay in November 2020 and couldn’t have been more excited. I rashly jumped to a few major conclusions in my first take on it, wishfully thinking it was a very early item, pre-Gap, dating between 1981-1983. I’ve always wanted to find something from that era, and I thought I had!

For me, the most exciting part was the tag. Simple and primitive, black printing on a white nylon tag, it has no other information on it that would indicate a corporate origin so I was thinking it looked like . There is no country of manufacture, no info about what it’s made of, no washing and care instructions. There is only a small sizing tag in addition to the logo tag.

Certainly, I recognized the design of The Coat of Bananas was not exactly correct. It doesn’t have the double oval, and it has two small circles in between the words. But I thought it could be an early variation of the design I hadn’t encountered before.

“Is this what clothing labels looked like on pre-Gap Banana Republic clothing?” I wondered hopefully. This has been a long standing obsession of mine. What did early labels look like? If I found an item from 1981 how would I identify it? This was actually a question I asked Patricia Ziegler when I met them at a book signing years ago, but she didn’t remember what they looked like.

In my excitement, there were several red flags I was overlooking with this sweater, beyond the suspect logo design. It wasn’t in any of the catalogs, first of all, and that’s really the best way to verify something as “early”. Secondly, it is an ODD piece, very out of style for classic Banana Republic; a decidedly “preppy” teal cardigan with red and white stripes and the “Coat of Bananas” Crest embroidered on the left breast.

I decided to ask Patricia Ziegler if she remembered this mysterious sweater. I never want to bother the Zieglers (who have been warmly supportive of this blog) but she immediately responded quite authoritatively:

This is simply a knock-off.

Knock offs were a regular problem back in the day, as she and Mel mention in the Wild Company book: “Designers were coming to the stores and buying one of everything. For what? Ideas? To ship to Hong Kong and have copied? Several customers told us they’d been to our store in Mexico City, and it was horrible how we chained the live parrots to the wall. And still others complained about cotton pants, bought at our Laguna Beach store, that fell apart after one washing. Mexico City? Laguna Beach? No time to even call a lawyer.”

This sweater might have been sold on the street, or at a flea market, or in some unscrupulous shop (Laguna Beach?) along with other knock-offs of other brands. I have no way of knowing where and when this item was made. It FEELS quite vintage, and I believe it was made in the 1980s when the Coat of Bananas was the main signifier of Banana Republic. But there’s no way to tell. The eBay seller was not the original owner, by the way.

It was a little embarrassing to have jumped to conclusions the way I did, and it’s disappointing that I didn’t discover some amazing early piece, but it’s still a rather fascinating item and I am delighted to add it to my Banana Republic collection.

Shown here with an authentic Banana Republic Yukon-style shirt, the sweater bears a simplified Coat of Bananas logo.