YouSaid · the spoken record

Mel and Patricia Ziegler

lines on the record: 133
first: 2024-08-19
most recent: 2024-08-19
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“We just were thinking so fast because we had no choice. And I just looked at her and I said, oh, Herb, nobody would want to wear sleeves rolled down with a shirt like this anyway. And I went over and I rolled up his shirt sleeves. And I said, there. And he looks in the mirror and he was very pleased and has so much more panache, you know?”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I said, Oh, that's a Spanish paratrooper shirt. We've just, but he said, Oh, I love it. He started taking off his denim shirt and putting on the shirt. And then he realized the sleeve stopped about mid forearm. And so I ran down and got him another one. And those sleeves were too short. I ran down and got two more and they were all super short.”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so we did that, and we had a dinner party at that point with a number of our writer friends and other friends, one of whom was a dear friend of mine, Herb Gold, who actually just recently died at 99. A wonderful novelist, he wrote about 36 novels. But at that point, he was there at dinner, and he went down. He said, where's the bathroom? It's downstairs. He came back upstairs with the shirt and he said, what's this?”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was it. That was it. We put them in the back of our car. We drove home. And we brought them down to our washroom. There were 500 shirts. We had piles of piles of shirts. We had to wash them ourselves because they hadn't been washed.”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, as we walked through, I would ask, you know, what about those? And he started 250, you know, and then I found then we walk a little further and I say, how about this? He'd say 225, you know, and I could tell he was just playing this all by ear. But then I saw this pile of olive green and khaki looked like great fabric. Felt the fabric, and I could see it was a shirt with epaulettes, and they had this cool kind of patch on the sleeve that was paratrooper.”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Dollar signs in his eyes and think, oh, this is just a dumb rich kid. He did. He was going to charge $1.50 instead of dollar 25”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Typewriters. And so we walked around this thing and we went to these things, and we were the only people there who were not surplus jobbers. The surplus jobbers would go there, buy a lot, and figure out how to sell all this stuff to everything else, and the clothes would be part of what they would turn up in the Army Navy Store.”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bay Area, just sort of at the edge of the Bay Area. Places like that or anywhere, and the government would have it an auction where they would sell lots of government surplus. So a lot of government surplus could be 50 shorts, khaki shorts. Several dozen tubes of army toothpaste.”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That were auctioned off at Air Force bases and other places like that. So you could actually go to Travis Air Force Base and this is in...”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I started to do some calling around and I found out how where this army surplus was being sold. It was largely being sold by the government in huge lots.”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, but if you could find jackets like that, you could upgrade them, add some classy touches and sell. Button's patches, or eventually. Cut up the pieces, make them into different things. And then we would sell Safari clothes.”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The extent of the research that made us realize that. This is what we ought to do. We ought to find more stuff like this and sell it.”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, some leather under the collar, patches on it. It was amazing. Patches on the other side. So we went back to the Chronicle everybody. He said, where did you get that jacket? And I guess that was...”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, yeah, I knew she would like this jacket. I knew she would because she was a flea market shopper and she would appreciate that this was a very special jacket.”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I told her I didn't care about fashion. I don't care about fashion. I don't care about what I wear. I wear the next available thing in the closet.”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But Australia was part of the British. Empire at some point. And so what I found there was not available in the US. And what the jacket I found was, I think, a Burma from Burma. The cotton is thicker than anything I've ever seen to this day. It was beautiful.”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had a freelance assignment to go to Australia. I was gone for a week or two. And in Australia, they have their versions of Army, Navy stores are called disposal stores. And I in those days, ever since, even at Columbia in the 1968, all I wore was army surplus, the old pea jackets and the anything I could find. And so I was fascinated by that. That was the only place I shopped. So I went into the disposal store in Sydney and I came out with this beautiful khaki jacket and I brought it home. I wore it home.”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was simple, profound. And I brought, I read it. Said, this is what we got to do. We got to figure out how we're going to do this. And so recall there were three steps to this thing. How much money do you want to make? How long will it take you to make it? And what will you do to make it?”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our goal was always to be free. Our goal was always to be able to live the life we wanted to live. And starting a business was going to be the only ticket we could possibly think of”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it was more difficult than we thought. I mean, freelancing wasn't really going to get us where we wanted to get. That became pretty clear pretty soon. We weren't going to get enough money to travel to see the world. And so at that point, said, well, we've got to figure out something. We got to start a business. But we had no idea what kind of business we were going to start.”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we're having a lot of fun at the chronicle and also a press pass could get you a parking place anywhere on any corner fire hydrant or not. But we looked around one day and realized that some of those people had been there for 30 years And that was kind of horrifying to us to have that predictable of a life.”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so you guys date, and then two years later you get married. Did both of you, I mean, Patricia, from your perspective when you were, you know, you guys get married in 1977, did you think that the career path that both of you had chosen would be your life? I mean, did you imagine that, okay, you know, we're here at the Chronicle and this is what we're probably going to end up doing.”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was so much fun. It was such a different city than it is today. It was just a really vibrant bohemian City free spirited in every way.”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we did, but we tried to keep it quiet. And then when we decided at one point to both take a week off at the same time, and we went to Hawaii, and we both came back with tans. So if you look at this Chronicle newsroom full of people in the middle of January, and there's two tan faces here and there. So people began to suspect, were they together? How did this happen? But we didn't really let anybody know. I mean, we were very quiet about it.”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was one of those moments that will be lost in time forever because when we both saw each other, there was such a profound connection. In many ways, we haven't barely been apart since.”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think at those days, the only job an unemployable person could get was this a newspaper reporter. Anyway, I was sitting there, I was covering these stories, and then I saw this beautiful woman walk in and turn into the art department. And I thought, whoa, that's somebody I want to meet. And right in front of the art department was the copy machine, the Xerox machine, as they called it that day. So I suddenly developed all these things I had to copy. And I went over and copied and copied and copied and stole as many glads as I could until finally. A couple of days later, there was a Christmas party, and I worked up my courage to go over and meet Patricia. And it was a moment that we talk about a lot because”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was both sketching in courtrooms and also sketching for the Daily Paper, and I was just thrilled. Here was a job where I'd go in, read stories, and draw. And then at that time, they just started letting artists into the courtrooms like Patty Hearst and the Zebra trial, Sarah Jane Moore.”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know eventually you went back to finisher art studies. In San Francisco at the Art Institute. And out of that, you got a gig at the Chronicle as a sketch illustrator. I don't even know if newspapers hire these are jobs in newspapers anymore, but you are basically sketching in courtrooms, right?”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where Sue, my roommate, she said, Oh, I hear the people dropped out that were here before. I said, What? They're a very ambitious real estate people in Isla Vista that just, you know, wanted to keep all those apartments filled. So I had no place to live. My parents weren't too happy about my draft resisting boyfriend, so they kind of stopped talking to me. And I went into the deans and said, you know, I decided I don't need a license to be an artist. I'm out of here. And we took off. I made him a pair of fringe leather pants. We took off hitchhiking. Everybody wanted a pair of fringe leather pants, the sauce. And so that became my... Income for the next couple of years as I traded French pants for rides to Idaho, Oregon. You would sew them yourself. I would tell myself. And basically just traveled wherever our thumbs would take us.”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, things were getting very stormy at UC Santa Barbara, and it was just right before they burned the Bank of America building down. My boyfriend was drafted, was called up. And he had heard that there was a psychiatrist up in Stanford who was helping guys get out of the draft. So he asked me to come with him. We hitchhike up together. Came back about two days late I see all my stuff in the alley at my apartment, I outlined”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I got to UC Santa Barbara and I was registering from my, I guess it was the second year I was registering for my major. I thought I was in the anthropology line, and the lines were like two hours long. I got up to the head of the line and said, okay, I want to register for anthropology. She said, oh, this is the art line. Anthropology is the next one over. I thought, oh, I can't do another two hours in the sun. Okay, it's my fate. I'm an artist.”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Skills. Mel was a writer, Patricia was an artist who also knew how to sew. So together, they set out to tell a story about clothing. Mel would write a quirky, photocopied and hand-stapled catalog. Patricia would buy inexpensive army surplus clothing and gussy it up with fashion forward alterations. With the little money they did have, they were able to open one shop in the sleepy town of Mill Valley, California, about 20 minutes north of San Francisco. This was in 1978, and they called their little store Banana Republic. At first, no one came. Crickets. But eventually, people started to discover their safari-themed apparel. Now, the original Banana Republic was very different to what you see today, and we'll get to that. But what made the brand pop”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember going to the printer to put out our latest catalog, and I hadn't slept in like three nights. I think I was just up around the clock, just trying to get it all pasted up and ready to go. I was driving home across the Golden Gate Bridge and all of a sudden I hear this honk. I wake up and realize I've veered into the oncoming traffic. You were falling asleep. I was falling asleep. I was so sleep. And I went home and I just broke down.”
2024-08-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Banana Republic: Mel and Patricia Ziegler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT