Where’d you get your pants?

A friend of mine* recently texted me a photo of a pair of Banana Republic pants on sale at Costco for $20.

There’s obviously a level of irony in this, because if you mouse on over to the Banana Republic website, you can see that their typical pair of their pants goes for about $100+.

But in addition to noticing that the pants cost five times as much on BR’s website, what you will also no doubt notice is that Banana Republic — as they have has for years —targets the ambitious, urban-but-roving professional class – a crew of folks who likely wouldn’t really fit in at Costco, with its $1.50 hotdogs and discount pharmaceuticals and rows of minivans in the parking lot.

But what’s interesting is this: although Costco has a decidedly populist vibe — bulk bags of Cheetos, 30-packs of toilet paper, “Buy 10, Save $50 on apparel” — a large percentage of its members earn more than $125k/year (source), which is to say, more or less the very income bracket that folks who shop at Banana Republic aspire toward.

So, those $20 BR chinos in the apparel section at Costco represent a homecoming of sorts — an admission that Costco is a store for down-to-earth people who can swing $100 membership fees and have both trunk space and room in their garage, while Banana Republic is aimed at folks who aspire to that income bracket, but whose “vibe” is decidedly not discounted or suburban.

So, yeah, just buy those pants at Costco.