Big Fashion Copies Small Vintage Shops. Here's What Happened When One Shop Fought Back.
Banana Republic accused of copying a San Francisco-based vintage shop's repair work for brand new denim designs.
I’m Emily Stochl and this is Pre-Loved, 🎤 reader-supported independent media about vintage and secondhand fashion.
PS: If you work in vintage or circular fashion, your $5 paid subscription to Pre-Loved is likely a business expense.
Hey hi hello! This weekend I bought a puffer jacket at Found+Formed.
Is there such a thing as a cute puffer jacket? Yes there is, and of course it’s vintage! I think the key — though you can’t quite tell it from this picture — is finding one that’s not tight around the bottom. The statement collar and big ole YKK zipper don’t hurt.
Similar here, here, here, here, and here.
Wild week. Yesterday I watched a Whatnot live show with Danny Santiago (of Sex and the City, And Just Like That, Devil Wears Prada, etc.) for 2 hours, where he sold from his archive and showed a couple pieces worn on screen in Sex and the City. My favorite quote was, “oh sorry, I don’t have that one, it’s in Sarah Jessica’s closet.”
I also received a tip about a letter from the Congressional Recommerce Caucus, addressing affordability and the future of recommerce. This summer, I reported on the formation of this first-ever bipartisan caucus, which was launched by Representatives Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-CA) and Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) to champion the growing resale economy.
Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove told Pre-Loved exclusively:
“As people wrap up their holiday shopping, affordability is top of mind. Recommerce offers a smart solution—giving consumers access to high-quality, sustainable goods at lower prices.
To keep these options within reach, we must protect shoppers from unnecessary price hikes by ensuring recommerced goods aren’t burdened by our tax policies while also investing in a strong circular economy.
This is about expanding affordable options, fueling a fast-growing industry, and, of course, saving fashion lovers like me a few bucks.”
— Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove
More on the Recommmerce Caucus below.
And when I got this tip about Banana Republic stealing a design from a San Francisco vintage shop, it made my blood boil. I knew we had to investigate. Once you notice this, you’ll see it everywhere:
Big Fashion wants to emulate the aesthetic of circularity without doing any of the actual work. They’ll imitate visible mending, launch their token “pre-loved” programs, and associate with vintage in their marketing (“not actually vintage, but feel free to pretend it is when people ask you.” —Reformation) but they’ll continue overproducing because their business model depends on it. It’s ‘vintage-washing’ and it’s everywhere.
Would love to hear if you’re seeing this, too—reply to this letter or drop me a line.
Today’s letter includes: Big Fashion co-opts repair as it steals from small vintage brands, Danny Santiago gives a peak behind the curtain of Sex and the City worn vintage, the Recommerce Caucus addresses affordability and the future of recommerce, and everything else you missed in secondhand fashion this week. Let’s dive in!
‘Vintage-Washing:’ When Big Fashion Co-Opts Vintage Aesthetics
“I could throw a rock and hit their office—we’re all right here in San Francisco.”
— Lindsey Hansen, The Future Past
Last month, Jenna Giusto was scrolling Instagram when a sponsored post from Banana Republic stopped her mid-swipe. The brand advertised a pair of $180 jeans with dark denim patches across the thighs and knees, stitched in deep blue thread. The placement, the pattern, even the size of the stitches looked familiar—too familiar.
Giusto works at The Future Past, a vintage clothing store in San Francisco where owner Lindsey Hansen specializes in repairing damaged vintage by hand. The jeans in Banana Republic’s ad looked nearly identical to a pair Hansen had restored over a year ago. Something felt off. So she forwarded the post to Hansen right away.
“My stomach sank,” Hansen told me.
She pulled out a hard drive that held photos from that restoration project — the vintage Levi’s 501s had come to her deeply damaged and threadbare, blown out in the thighs and knees, with a deteriorating back pocket. She’d cut away the worst sections, patched them with coordinating denim scraps from around the vintage shop, and reinforced everything with Sashiko, a Japanese hand-stitching technique that uses small, precise cross-stitches.
“The hand stitching takes a long time because the stitches are so small,” she told me. “It’s a true labor of love.”
The project took two full days. When it was done, Hansen posted the photos and a process video to Instagram and her website, where the jeans ultimately sold online. While it’s common for designers to purchase vintage for inspiration, Hansen doesn’t know if Banana Republic purchased the jeans or simply saw the images. “I actually looked up the purchase history for that sale, but they didn’t leave a name, email or phone number,” she said.
Side by side with the Banana Republic listing, the similarities of Hansen’s design were undeniable: the same patch sizes and placement on both legs, the same cross-stitch pattern in the same deep blue thread. Even the back pockets matched exactly.
“It’s an awful feeling to see someone has copied something that you’ve done without any collaboration,” she said. “No one reached out to us. The worst part is, I could throw a rock and hit their office—we’re all right here in San Francisco.”
“Having this one-of-a-kind piece turn into a mass-produced item felt so backwards. It’s the opposite of what we’re trying to do.”
— Lindsey Hansen, Future Past
The irony especially hit a nerve. Hansen’s work centers on keeping clothing in circulation, repairing what already exists rather than manufacturing something new. Banana Republic had taken that ethos—repair as preservation—and turned it into a mass-produced garment made from fresh denim, designed to look like it had been lovingly mended over years of wear.
“Having this one-of-a-kind piece turn into a mass-produced item felt so backwards,” Hansen said. “It’s the opposite of what we’re trying to do.”
Banana Republic even posted its own (since deleted) process video, featuring a designer discussing the jeans over design sketches and footage of someone stitching on the patches—a near-mirror of the process video Future Past had originally shared.
At first, Hansen hesitated about speaking out. She’s worked in the fashion industry her entire career, often for small companies who had designs lifted by larger brands. The pattern was always the same: frustration, resignation, moving on. Legal action felt out of reach, impossible to win, and too expensive. But social media has shifted the power dynamic.
“Now it feels like you at least have a voice,” she said. “You have a community of people who will rally behind you.”
So she posted a video comparing the two pairs of jeans. The social media response was swift — to date it has 120,000 views.
Comments flooded in, tagging Gap Inc. (Banana Republic’s parent company) and Banana Republic’s accounts. “As much as I hate being in the spotlight and as much as I struggled to actually decide to speak out, I’m so glad I did,” Hansen said. “I can’t tell you how relieved I feel for having spoken up and how supported I feel.”
Greenwashing is a form of advertising that deceptively uses sustainability marketing to persuade the public that a brand’s products, goals, or policies are environmentally friendly. After hearing Hansen’s story, I couldn’t shake the idea that Big Fashion brands “vintage-wash” as much as they greenwash. Whether it’s approximating the look of repair like Banana Republic, launching “pre-loved” capsule collections like H&M, or selling others’ vintage on their site like Free People, brands use proximity to vintage as a marketing tactic, all while continuing to overproduce new garments.
I spoke to Dani Des Roches, a designer who has previously worked for the URBN Corporation (which owns Anthropologie, Free People, and Urban Outfitters). She said this kind of copying happens unfortunately often in the fashion industry.
Design teams scout everywhere: vintage stores, competitors, fast fashion, small indie labels. Sometimes they purchase samples with genuine intentions to use them as inspiration—a jumping-off point for color, silhouette, or mood. But those intentions can get muddied when the samples reach leadership or merchandising teams.
“Most designers want to be creative,” Des Roches said. “They don’t want to copy. But merchandisers and buyers can find it easier to visualize a finished product that’s right in front of them, rather than to imagine a sketch brought to life.”
“I’ve been in meetings where we offered original in-house designs based off a design sample, and the leadership said, ‘We really like this piece exactly as it is. We want it exactly like this.’ The choice gets taken away from the designer.”
Denim has been particularly vulnerable to this for decades. Distressing is common practice: brands bring in a pair of well-worn vintage jeans—years of daily wear, natural whiskering, a rip at the knee, a tear at the seat—and copy the distressing onto new jeans. Des Roches said brands will even pin photocopied images from the vintage jeans onto fresh denim to send them to the factory, where workers will use wash techniques, stone treatments, and other technologies to replicate the exact wear patterns of the vintage version.
“What’s happening now with visible mending and repair is just an evolution of that,” she said. “Brands are interpreting repair as a design ‘trend’ that can be replicated. Someone who isn’t buying into the anti-capitalist ethos of mending might just think, ‘That looks cool,’ without understanding the reason behind it.”
Hansen worries that if repair becomes watered down as a trend, people will stop doing the real work once the aesthetic falls out of fashion. “I just hope people don’t stop repairing their jeans because they think it’s not cool anymore,” she said.
“Brands are interpreting repair as a design ‘trend’ that can be replicated. Someone who isn’t buying into the anti-capitalist ethos of mending might just think, ‘That looks cool,’ without understanding the reason behind it.”
— Dani Des Roches
Following the social media response, Gap Inc. reached out to Hansen to discuss a resolution. Within days of her original post, Banana Republic had removed the jeans from its website. “We take their concerns seriously as a brand that supports the local creative community,” a Gap Inc. spokesperson told the San Francisco Chronicle. “Our team is looking into this matter and will handle as appropriate.”
Hansen said her conversations with the brand are ongoing, but she’s personally struggling to figure out what accountability should look like.
“I don’t have a use for their remaining inventory because we’re a small shop and we only repair using vintage denim,” she said. “But I also feel this obligation to make sure those jeans don’t just get burned or thrown in a landfill. That would be an even bigger waste of resources.
Finding a home for them feels like an overwhelming task. I have a 15-month-old, I run a small business—this wasn’t something I asked for.”
She says she ultimately feels invested in where the jeans go and has asked Gap Inc. — who is looking into resources — to provide a contractual guarantee around whatever is decided. She’s also suggested that if the company continues producing faux-repaired denim in the future, they include tags encouraging customers to seek out local repair shops or learn to mend their own clothes. According to the 2024 Remake Fashion Accountability Report, Gap Inc. had scored zero points in the “Extending Product Lifecycle” category, which includes repair and resale efforts.
I asked Des Roches whether she thought big fashion brands could change, or if these exploitative behaviors are baked into the business model. She hesitated. “I thought the pandemic would change things,” she said. “With the stories about garment workers not getting paid—people seemed galvanized. But it didn’t shift the entire culture the way I hoped it would.”
She felt real change would require one of two things: consumers stop buying fast fashion and only support brands committed to sustainability, or legislators step in.
On an individual level, she felt Gap Inc. should recognize Hansen for her design and compensate her for it. The company should also issue a public apology. “This person shouldn’t be feeling the weight of responsibility to speak for the entire slow fashion movement. She should just ask herself: ‘What would make me feel better in this moment?’”
For Hansen, the answer feels more weighted than a check or an apology. Opening Future Past six years ago gave her a way to work directly with people, helping them keep clothes in their closets by repairing them, altering them, or upcycling heirlooms into wearable pieces.
“I think repair and using existing materials are the future,” she said. “We live with too many garments in the world. Too many of them get shipped overseas, polluting drinking water and taking over land. What if companies with billions of dollars focused on making use of what already exists? Even just a portion of their business. That would make a huge impact.”
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