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How's your aloha shirt?

It's very nice.

I wore it to a big art festival in Delray Beach last weekend.

Thanks again for your help with the exchange.

I'll be back for more after my taxes are settled.

I should have just enough coming back for about half a shirt.

Happy Trails,
Rocky Helderman

Hawaiian shirt green bamboo batik

Thank you for your follow up.

I am very pleased with the shirt and am not sorry I wait for it to arrive.

I bought the hawaiian shirt to wear when we go to Mexico and haven't worn it hear because the weather is still to cold.

The service and the quality and been excellent and I plan to keep watching your site for others I might like.

Thanks again;

Jim Woods

Touching the world, if only just a little.

Hello. I have two items in my cart and am ready to buy them. But before I do, I'd like to understand what you mean by 'vintage'. What counts as 'vintage' to you, please?

My husband is on TV often and he loves to wear vintage Hawaiian shirts. If yours are truly vintage, perhaps we can connect and I can tell you what sorts of colors he prefers, in case you come across them.

Thanks!

ZOE

MY REPLY:

Hey Zoe,

That is a great question! I hope this will be a satisfactory answer.

There are two types of vintage shirts and two types of vintage shirt customers.

The first type is a collector's shirt for the collector. They will look for the most important factor, "do I love this shirt" and then secondary ones such as condition, age, potential value, etc. They are buying to add to their collection, and generally know what things to look for. Collectors shirts are priced a higher.

The second type is a 'wearing shirt' for the people who want to actually put the shirt on their body for day-to-day use. They look only at the most important factor, "do I love this shirt. I purchase shirts I like myself, as I know someone out there will feel the same. Wearing shirts are priced low.

For what it is worth, I like your selections. These two shirts are contemporary to the mid 1980s and are great colors and prints.

I do have other customers I search for, please let me know your husband's needs. Why is he on tv, is he part of a tv show?

Kind regards,
John B
704-288-0953

HER REPLY

Great answer! Makes sense to me. My husband does tend to go for 80's prints. I think he'll love these. He tends to appreciate bright colors and like there to be some black in the print -- not always though.

He's wearing a bold print on the Dr. Oz Show, airing March 24th. Check it out! Wardrobe loved it, and I do to. He's worn that shirt maybe one too many times though and I'm proactively seeking some great new prints in the same genre to keep handy.

Chris is a high profile ethnobotanist but he's also a surfer at heart. I love that about him and support including these shirts in the 'image' creation when it feels appropriate and fun. The aloha shirts are sometimes worn at speaking events, conferences, on TV and in photos for magazines like Outdoor magazine and Psychology Today. Although I think he went shirtless for Outside(!)

He's a medicinal plant expert. He's also on Fox as a regular guest with Ask Dr. Manny (Fox TV Health's main Dr.) and they're producing individual segments for him now.

Just thinking out loud here. Chris likes to give back to people who he likes. If he ends up loving your shirts I see no reason why we couldn't put your URL on our site somewhere.

I'm going to buy those shirts, but before I do - can you think of any others like this?

He prefers blues -- love indigo -- and black but he'll also wear bright purples and such sometimes.

Thanks!

Aloha shirt history

Hawaiian shirts' colorful history (author unknown)

March 23rd, 2010

If you’re a true-blue surfer, chances are that an Aloha shirt or three are lurking in your closet – the next time you plan to wear your bright, tropical Hawaiian gem, spare a thought for this article of clothing’s colorful history…which you may not have been aware of…

Hawaiian shirts were popular long before Elvis Presley wore a red aloha shirt on the album cover for the “Blue Hawaii” soundtrack in 1961. In fact, the modern Hawaiian shirt came about in the early 1930s.

A Chinese merchant named Ellery Chun of King-Smith Clothiers and Dry Goods, owned a store in Waikiki. Ellery started to sew brightly colored aloha shirts for tourists fashioned from old kimono fabrics he had leftover in stock.

The Honolulu Advertiser newspaper was quick to coin them by the term ‘Aloha shirt’ and Ellery trademarked the name. The first ad in the Honolulu Advertiser for Chun’s Hawaiian shirts was published in June 1935. Local residents and as you’d expect…especially those in the surfing community, as well as tourists descended on Chun’s store and bought every shirt he had.

Within just a few years, major designer labels opened all over Hawaii and began to manufacture and sell Aloha shirts en masse. Retail chains in Hawaii, even mass produced Hawaiian shirt designs to use as their employee uniforms. At sites like Hawaiian Shirts Central you’ll see some of the best examples of shirt Hawaiian and apparel.

After World War II, many servicemen and servicewomen returned to the United States from Asia and the Pacific islands with aloha shirts that had been made in Hawaii since the 1930s. Then as the tourists started flocking to Hawaii post WW2 in the 1950s, the colorful tropical-print shirts for men and sundresses for women became standard souvenirs for travelers.

In 1962, a professional manufacturing association known as the Hawaiian Fashion Guild began to promote Hawaiian shirts and clothing for use in the workplace, particularly as business attire. In a campaign very aptly called 'Operation Liberation' the Guild delivered two aloha shirts to every member of the Hawaii House of Representatives and the Hawaii Senate. This was a success because a resolution was soon passed in the Senate advising that aloha attire (essentially Hawaiian shirts) be worn throughout the summer in Hawaii.

In 1965, Bill Foster, Sr., the then president of the Hawaii Fashion Guild, led a campaign lobbying for an official and regular “Aloha Friday”, a day when all employers would allow their staff to wear Hawaiian shirts on the last business day of the week. In 1966 Aloha Friday officially began in Hawaii and has since spread worldwide – although now-a-days it is commonly referred to as ‘Casual Friday’.

chai am woman: oh happy (fri)day

chai am woman: oh happy (fri)day

Aloha Shirts and the vacated island

I found a great article for fifty fun facts about Hawaii at a Seattle paper (link), it mentions Kahoolawe as having the color gray as its official color, and that gray does not appear on Aloha shirts (beg to differ).

It got me to wondering about some of the other Hawaiian islands, the ones you can't or won't visit.

Kahoolawe is Hawaiian for "the one that was taken away". It is all of 45 square miles of desert sitting in Maui's rainshadow surrounded by the Pacific. It is presently uninhabited, is reserved as a site for the preservation of native Hawaiian culture and was used as target practice by the US Navy (and its allies) for decades. You may be able to volunteer to do work on Kahoolawe as part of the restoration project.

Then there is Niihau, off the west coast of Kauai. It is privately owned and its shores are vigilantly guarded. Landings are unwelcome.

Molokini is offshore south and east of Lahaina harbor on Maui. It is a partially sunken volcanic cone, and the crater is tipped so that it is full of water. It is a top diving spot, but going ashore is a criminal offense.

Nihoa is an island about the size of a football stadium about 120 miles north and west of Honolulu. It is uninhabited, is covered with archaeological sites, and has some species such as the Nihoa finch that exist only there. Landings are by state permissions only, and protection against biological contaminations are vigorously enforced and extreme. For example, no cardboard. It sometimes contains worm eggs of a sort that may violate the existing Nihoa environment.

Lehua island, located north of Niihau is another island you will probably not only never see, but never set foot on. It is a seabird nesting reserve. It is a sunken volcanic caldera like Molokini.

Kaula lies about 23 miles west and north of Niihau, and is a semicircular cliff edged island. It is about 160 acres, was used for target practice like Kahoolawe (and Molokai for that matter), and is considered sacred. No landings.

Manana is a 63 acre island off the coast of Oahu (also called Rabbit Island) and is also a seabird sanctuary. No landings.

Na Molulua are two islands off the coast of Oahu you can set foot on. Just a short kayak trip through the home of sharks and you're there.

Mokolii off the coast of Oahu is known as "Chinaman's Hat Island" due to its upswept shape. Open to the public dawn to dusk, all 12.5 acres of it.

The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa's Apparel Product Design and Merchandising Program's Historic Costume Collection has initiated an online exhibit to digitize its aloha shirt collection.

Due to the limited exhibit space available on campus, curator Carol D`Angelo is making the aloha shirt collection publicly available digitally. The UH Mānoa aloha shirt collection is one of only two such collections in the western U.S., and the only one in the Pacific, according to Dr. Michael Thomas, Digital Collections Manager of the University of Hawai‘i Virtual Museum.

The project was initiated in fall 2009 by Jennifer Halaszyn, a student in the Museum Studies Graduate Certificate Program. A collaborative internship project, it involved several faculty, staff and volunteers including Carol D’Angelo, Curator of the Historic Costume Collection; Dr. Karen Kosasa, Chair of the UH Museum Consortium; David Beales, University Photographer; and Melissa Rand, Graduate Assistant in Museum Studies. The project has digitally photographed more than 50 Aloha shirts. The online exhibit is publicly available through the UH Virtual Museum at: www.museum.hawaii.edu.

Popularized by local garment makers and celebrities, the aloha shirt spread in use in the United States and abroad. The shirts in this collection were influenced by fabrics and fashion design elements from Native Hawaiian culture as well as Hawai‘i’s many immigrant cultures. The aloha shirt is important in the history of Hawaiian fashion, particularly for its influence on casual business attire, now a generally accepted custom in Hawai‘i and elsewhere.

UH Mānoa's Historic Costume Collection is one of the largest collections of garments, textiles, and related artifacts in an American university. For more information, call Michael Thomas at 956-4168 or email mbthomas@hawaii.edu.

Aloha Shirts

This is my opening blog for Aloha shirts.

During the rise of the Hawaiian shirt, manufacturers from all over the world copied the widely popular themes.

Shirts from the Caribbean, Africa, California, Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere started making inroads into what was once a market primarily dominated by Hawaiian makers.

The term is widely believed to have been first coined by a Honolulu based shirtmaker, Koichiro Miyamoto (aka Musa-Shiya). Known for his poetic advertisements, he placed an advertisement in the Honolulu Advertiser June 28, 1935:

"Honolulu's noted shirt maker and Kimono shop. 'Aloha' shirts - well tailered, beautiful designs and radiant colors. Ready-made or made to order... 95 cents and up"

The 95 cent shirt from Musa Shiyas shop today sells for thousands. If you can find one.

Other sources place the appearance of the product into the late 1920s, but the term 'aloha shirt' was coined at a time when the word 'aloha' was being attached to a great many saleable goods.

The term was copywritten in 1936.

Today, it is understood that a Hawaiian shirt, to be a true hawaiian shirt, should be from Hawaii... but is often not. An aloha shirt must be made in Hawaii.