“Where the f*** is my banana top?” stylist and thrifting queen, Bay Garnett says, frantically digging through the upstairs wardrobes of her West London home. We’re speaking via Zoom, and Garnett’s laptop is perched on her hip to free up her hands. In the background, Bobby (her Sicilian rescue dog) is kipping on a bed, oblivious to the trawl. “It’s here somewhere!”
Long-lost fishing equipment emerges from the depths of the bedroom closet, but there’s no sign yet of the $5 charity shop find that went on to inspire one of Phoebe Philo’s most famous designs during her early Noughties tenure at Chloé.
“I remember it so vividly,” the stylist says of the fateful thrifting spree in 1999 where she made the discovery. “It was a bright Saturday morning in New York. There, on the discount rail in Cancer Care was…THIS,” she says, pulling a banana print T-shirt from her bedroom drawer. “It was the best thing I’d ever seen.”
A sign above the rail had read: “These pieces must go!” Go it did. To Paris Fashion Week, by way of British Vogue, no less. For the May 2003 issue, Garnett and her best friend Anita Pallenberg were enlisted by then-editor-in-chief Alexandra Shulman to style a fashion shoot using only their greatest charity shop finds. “I remember going to Anita’s flat in Chelsea with two black bin liners full of clothes. We sat together on the floor to sift through everything,” she says. “Watching the recent Amazon Studios documentary about her life [Catching Fire: The Story of Anita Pallenberg] made me miss her – and the fun we had – so much.” The resulting fashion story, which saw Kate Moss photographed by Juergen Teller at her north London home, became a watershed moment for high fashion’s love affair with pre-loved style.
The seminal look: the banana print T-shirt paired with white hot pants and a brown woven leather belt. Philo, naturally an avid British Vogue reader, called Garnett shortly after the magazine hit shelves, asking to borrow the top. Fast forward to Chloé’s spring/summer 2004 runway, and the irreverent print inspired a pop cultural phenomenon. Which leads us to today.
“I’ve bagged the Chloé dress to wear for my birthday party,” I say, pulling my treasure out of my handbag. Garnett pulls on her original T-shirt and we pose side by side in adjacent Zoom windows. “Where did you get that?” she asks. eBay, I say. It’s back in Vogue. “This is the definition of full-circle circularity, isn’t it?”
