It’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything new to the Abandoned Republic. Life and work have gotten in the way, I am afraid. I actually have a great backlog of stuff to post as I get the time. Most importantly, I wanted to get the catalog archive moving forward again. So I thought I’d change my approach and just start adding a page every day instead of waiting until I had the whole catalog scanned and labeled. That way you can have a little something new very day and I can keep things going in bite sized chunks. We’ll see how it goes.
By the way, I hope you had a great Christmas and that Santa brought you some old BR clothes for under the tree. I was especially bummed I didn’t have time to do ANY posts during the holiday season, because there’s so much great holiday material from Banana Republic. But then I thought, let’s just keep Christmas going and start the New Year with the Christmas 1984 Banana Republic Catalog #21.
This is an interesting catalog cover because it was actually done THREE different times. The 1984 Holiday cover is a color version of the 1982 cover drawing. What’s really interesting is that the cover was repainted entirely for the 1986 Holiday Update! The 86 version is not the exact same drawing, but it’s a copy that an artist made of that drawing. Kind of cool, you can play a “what’s different” game with the images. The cat is now napping, for instance. All three feature a cameo by Livingstone the Zebra. They also cater to the yuppie intellectual with nods to the New Yorker magazine and teh Wall St. Journal. The WSJ shows up a lot in these catalogs. The go-go 80s, doncha know.
Come back tomorrow for another page from catalog #21!
Hey Scott. Thanks for posting these great images. Every time I go past the BR store in a mall I grumble because it just isn’t Banana Republic. Your website takes me back to those good ol’ days.
I second this.