The Authentic Field Jacket

Maria, a fan of my Facebook page posted this picture yesterday to show off her 1980s Banana Republic jacket. It wasn’t one I immediately recognized. It’s not the Bush jacket, or the Correspondent’s jacket, and certainly isn’t a Safari jacket. But it had a BIG LABEL, so we know it’s an older piece. Obviously, it’s seen some serious action, possibly a tiger attack, but what is it?

This is one of the reasons I do this blog the way I do. I searched through the Men’s Jackets page and easily found what turns out to be the Authentic Field Jacket (modeled on a U.S. military jacket) , as pictured in the Winter 1984 catalog #17, which as far as I know is the last time it was offered. I do not have catalog 18 Spring 1984 to confirm that.  I then found it in my recently acquired (unscanned) catalogs #15 and 16, but not in catalog #12. So we can say for certain that this jacket was only offered by Banana Republic in 1983 and early 1984.

That means it’s one of those rare pieces that pre-dates the GAP purchase and that makes it very cool to me. This is one of the reasons I love doing this blog. There’s lots of vintage BR stuff out there and it’s really helpful to know what’s really unusual, and it’s nice to have a (hopefully) easy way to look something up and place it in time. Thanks for sharing, Maria!