Shopping Safari! “Banana Republic Guide” Employee Vests and Shirts
One of the more fun items to collection are store employee “guide” vests and shirts. These are either hooded bush vests or Expedition shirts with a silk-screened stars and bananas emblem labeled Banana Republic Guide. Probably one of the coolest and highest quality retail “uniforms” ever!
I first heard about these when I found an old Craigslist ad selling one. The hunt was on! Eventually I had three different samples and I’ve seen other variations, including a black shirt.
This employee helping a customer may be wearing one of the official Banana Republic Guide vests, but we can’t say for sure. (1988 Press photo from my personal collection)
Love the catalogs and have a few of my own. Love and miss those times with destinations without multitudes and malls.
This is so funny to see! While the idea was good, the employees hated, really hated, to wear these items. They really restricted the sense of uniqueness that each employee wanted to bring to the store with their personal style, and just looked artificial in the stores. In the Summer, they were a bear to wear (as you can imagine)! But, our in-store traffic was so enormous that it was felt that the employees needed to “stand out” within the crowd. For me, a name badge was good enough as our customer service was legendary and few customers ever had to ask who worked in a store!
That’s fascinating! I hadn’t thought about how they’d restrict personal style, which must have been a big draw to work there. Thanks for sharing your memories!
i worked in one in the late 80s. I found the opposite actually. I loved that i did not have to worry about ‘dressing for work’ every day. I just wore their clothes. The difficult part was the vest, customers always wanted to buy one …but one with ‘guide’ on the back not realizing that was for employees only. Happened over and over!
Wow! Thanks for bringing back some fond memories. My ex wife Patty and I spent a ton of money at Banana Republic in their stores in New York and Connecticut. and mail order.. If I remember correctly. the Connecticut store had a full size WW2 Army Jeep in the entrance. You guys brought back the happiest times in my life. We split under a misunderstanding [really]. We used too wear our safari clothes to go house hunting! I still have one of their Israeli surplus bags! Good quality stuff!! Too bad they’re gone. The founder of The Men’s Warehouse was forced out by management too. Hey, one door closes, another opens.
I loved this store in the 80s and purchased two of their safari vests. I loved the storefront deco, with an old Jeep in a jungle – looking like a movie set.
I worked for one summer at the Banana Republic in the store in the newly renovated Union Station mall in Saint Louis in the 1980s, making good use of the employee discount to load up on clothes. The managers were given special Day-Timer books by the company with gray leather covers embossed to look like elephant hide. I always wanted one of those.