Do the items referred to actually use the Banana Republic logo? If so it's possible she was told to cease and desist and is just too embarrassed to say as much. Regardless of that, she's full of shit blaming her move to TSSR on pirates. She should have just remargined her bandwidth better.
I don't believe they had the logo on them (could be wrong though). It was just a bunch of Sims1 furniture redone for Sims2. It was a pretty nice set, but it actually looked better in Sims1(imo).
The Banana Republic referred to, was a Sims 1 site not to be confused with the retail stores.
There is horrid history of greed associated with the owner of Banana Republic, CosyCole aka CashCole. It was exorbitantly over priced crappy stuff. With the exception of a few items by a creators who's names I can't remember now (some are still around). All of it with a heavy ethnic theme.
Bah sometimes I miss all the drama we had in Sims 1 *sigh*