This shit is bananas

on fruit trends

I love a bizarre trend as much as the next person. In clothing and not. I adored the brief and glorious reign of the fidget spinner. I could not get enough of the astroboy boot when when it was on the ascent.

But my all time favorite trend. As strange as it was undeniable. Was Three Oranges In A Mesh Bag.

This was a real actual trend.

(And believe it or not there is a historical precedent for a fascination with three oranges)

Ahhhh 2018. What a time! I remember cackling at this one. But I can’t help but think that, maybe, just maybe, time might be a flat circle. Fruit might be back.

Yes, generally, fruit is appealing and beautiful. A little fun and a little sexy. A symbol of sweetness! Of fecundity! And if you’re feeling macabre, collections of fruit are nods to Dutch “Vanitas” paintings, where lush tableaus of rotting fruits and flowers were reminders of fleeting mortality (… or if, like Joris Van Son, you think that people simply will not get the message, you can add skulls and a gun to drive the point home).

And in clothing, one can’t help but think of Carmen Miranda. Who was, in 1945, the highest-earning woman in the United States. The Brazilian singer from Portugal exoticized herself into a superstardom, and is considered the great grandmother of the tropicalia movement in the 60s.

So the fruit hat. What tradition is it from? What culture is it from? Hers. If the internet is to be believed, Carmen Miranda worked as a hat designer back in Brazil, and invented this look whole cloth. It’s from her mind and her life alone. But her fruit hat has since gone on to achieve a mythical cultural status. Especially since Chiquita Banana International re-designed their logo based on Miranda’s hat.

This character became the friendly smiling veneer of a vicious fruit conglomerate that repeatedly tried to overthrow a number of democratically elected governments. To add insult to injury, the Chiquita lady also appeared in racist cartoons.

The woman with the fruit hat morphed into an ambiguous stereotype, completely separate from the powerful cultural figure who it was based on.

…although, a personal aside, the Chiquita lady eventually led to this animatronic banana that I grew up going to see in our local Destination Grocery Store. Although in my memory this dancing banana was somehow more… erotic? I would watch it do this thing over and over again. In hindsight she is terrifying.

As you might have guessed, the other classic Fruit Wearer is Josephine Baker. Who also exoticized herself into superstardom by means of bananas

The thing that’s fascinating, for both Miranda and Baker- is that, yes, they are fetishizing themselves. And yet, in oversimplified terms, they seem to be in on the joke. They’re winking into an imaginary fruity stereotype. And making serious bank in the process.

One of my favorite designers of all time, Patrick Kelly, paid homage to Baker with his version of the banana skirt.

So… bananas. As much as Three Oranges In A Mesh Bag was for 2018, I am convinced that Lone Solitary Banana the fruit trend for 2023.

I am seeing it in all the holiday gift guides from my favorite fashion writers:

Blackbird Spyplane recommended this banana ornament.

Emilia Petrarca highlighted this banana menorah (apparently there are multiple companies who make this joke and of course now I see it everywhere)

There is this c00l product which is -truly- just a concrete decorative banana.

Puppets and Puppets recently dropped this cheeky banana hobo bag

I actually bought this quirky bedding set when Aelfie was having their clearance sale.

Also Stella McCartney-era Chloe is part of the whole “aughts are back” style. And that was very banana heavy.

Sure, you could say that a banana is inherently funny (and phallic tee hee). But why is the banana’s moment right now?

I fear that the answer might lie in a trip I once took to Seattle. When I was there, downtown, I noticed that almost every single person I passed was carrying a single banana. Many Seattleites were unpeeling their bananas and eating them as they walked. It seemed like a bizarre regional custom, until I realized where they had all come from.

There are a number of these banana stands placed strategically around Seattle (and, I hear, now Arlington). The so called “banananistas” give out bananas to passers-by, all entirely for free. Courtesy of one Jeff Bezos.

This (admittedly old) graphic is great for understanding the enormity of Jeff Bezos’ wealth. It is hard to fathom the concept of hundreds of billions of dollars. And as if Jeff would let you forget how unfathomable it is— he will give out a bushels and bushels of bananas, for free, every single day. And hire people to give them out. No problem!

The ever-brilliant Mona Chalabi gave me a gift by making this point by incorporating bananas. How perfect is that.

Even though I, as an elitist point of pride, do not shop on Amazon, by virtue of being an American Citizen, I pay Bezos when I pay my taxes. Our government uses Amazon Web Services. The used books I buy are fulfilled by Amazon. So many of the movies I adore are produced by Amazon. It can’t be avoided.

So I took a banana from the stand. It was like taking 67 cents back. Ha! Take that, Amazon.

But the question I had was- why does Jeff do this? Surely it cannot only be a flex. It is because he wants his HQ employees to get a little potassium for maximum efficiency? He wants to sow general good will? Of all the fruit- of all the snacks!- why bananas?

I went to a bananista. I asked. Why bananas? She answered: “because they are individually wrapped.”

This, to me, is everything.

This piecemeal fruit distribution is not a generous bowl overflowing. Not a mesh bag, with no wallet, no keys, just three carefree oranges. Not an apple, tempting you with its thin barrier of skin soaking up the dirty outside world. A safe, sanitary, individual banana. Seemingly Exotic, Ostensibly Naughty, but in truth, safe. And also, unreal.

The modern banana is a sterile simulacrum of another extinct breed of banana, which was monocropped to the brink of extinction by 1960. In large part, thanks to the company that would one day become Chiquita.

Helen Tseng (who made the Articles of Interest art!) also made this really handy infographic for Lucky Peach

If you do want to taste the original banana that America fell in love with, a close approximation is the artificial banana flavor of Laffy Taffy.

The banana exists as an abstraction. As a Velvet Underground album cover. As Baker’s skirt. As Miranda’s hat. It’s more symbolic than real. It was, after all, so easily replaced. It remains so easily faked.

The banana is not a vanitas painting. It is not a reminder of the fleeting beauty of life. The banana is proof that, with the right technology, with the right cultural cache, one could go on living forever.

Thanks to my sister and our group chat with our boyfriends for handing me this idea (which I just manically ran with)

Addendum: wow, a reader (thanks Gretchen!) alerted me to the fact that MIT also gives out free bananas to all students (funded by a venture capitalist alumnus). This is A Thing.