Kelshaw: If you remember the break-dancing movement, which was originally a kind of inner-city, Black social form, you’re around people gathering around the boombox, and they dance. Then in 1980, or 1979, we had the release of the Sony Walkman, so we started to have this privatization of experience — we started to have this kind of inward turn in white suburbia, this turn away from the “dangerous” people of color who were occupying those public spaces in the cities. We had the rise of what we call “yuppiedom.” And that very moment, the moment when Ronald Reagan was elected, we had the launch of this particular jacket. If you look at the advertisements, they’re almost entirely dominated or populated by white men in very suburban settings.
Glasscock: The ad campaign was so self-serious that in retrospect, one had to think they couldn’t possibly be serious — the seeds of irony were sown.
Kelshaw: The jacket came to really signify this inward social turning, this kind of privatization. It was a white, suburban response to the anxiety of globalization manifested by the Reagan administration. That a jacket with the brand-name “Members Only” gained popularity among this demographic group says a lot about the era’s emerging values of exclusivity, privatization and wealth-based social status. I mean, it was a cheap jacket — it was 55 bucks. When they designed them in those multiple colors, they had some conflict with the department stores that were selling them, because they didn’t have the kind of rack space that would show them off.
So it’s appropriate that the brand was built upon celebrity endorsements, with early ads featuring General Hospital star Anthony Geary (and, subsequently, other celebrities) saying, “When you put it on, something happens.” But it’s particularly interesting that, in 1986, the company replaced its conventional advertisements with anti-drug quasi-public service announcements, in line with the Reagan administration’s “Just say no” initiative. Nancy Reagan even sent a letter of appreciation.
Just as the Sony Walkman was a white, suburban response to the African-American, urban boombox (or “ghetto blaster,” as the suburbanites tended to call them at the time), the Reagan administration’s anti-drug campaign and the Members Only public service announcements were, in ways, a manifestation of white suburban anxiety. Crack cocaine was the epidemic drug of the moment (circa 1984-1985), and it was essentially an urban, African-American affliction. Just as fences and gates insulated white, suburban, affluent communities from the dangers of the cities, the anti-drug PSAs were, in a sense, a similar kind of attempt at insulation.