Dropping Knowledge: Hawaiian Shirts


It looks like it’s going to be a wavy season. And no, we’re not playing weatherman, we’re talking about all those loud, patterned shirts. Once a pop culture castoff (the stereotypical garb for overweight tourists), the Hawaiian (or Aloha) shirt is returning to its storied roots. Vibrant prints peppered with pineapples, surfers, leis, and pretty much anything else even remotely related to the beach have been trimmed down, and elevated from clueless to cool.

To trace the circuitous route of the Hawaiian shirt, we’ll of course be landing in the Aloha State. But our journey begins further back, before what we now know as the state of Hawaii was born.

In the early twentieth century, the Hawaiian islands experienced an influx of immigrants coming in to work at the many plantations. The climate catered to cash crops like sugarcane, and the island’s South Pacific location made it easy to export the crops. As these workers came in from across the world, they brought with them their culture’s respective garments-of-choice. The Japanese brought along their kimonos, Filipinos introduced the straight hem, the shirt collar came down from the States, and the native Hawaiians, well, they’d been wearing bright patterns for centuries. Mix all of these factors in a sartorial brew, and you have the quintessential Aloha shirt. Plantation workers in the ’20s worked the field each day wearing an early version of the short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt, but the tourists would solidify the shirt as an icon of the islands.

Ellery Chun, an entrepreneurial young college-grad saw how tourists responded to the festive local shirting, and began mass-producing the Hawaiian shirt to sell it to the island’s visitors. Chun’s original shirts were covered in garish floral prints that screamed, "I’m on vacation," as these advocates so obviously were. With his newfound success Chun’s own business expanded, and the imitators were quick to follow. Hawaiian shirts had developed into a thriving industry of their own. In the late ’50s, with the formation of the state of Hawaii, interest in the islands was at an all time high, and the Aloha shirt came along for the ride.

So-Cal label Reyn Spooner began introducing Hawaiian shirts with muted, conservative patterns that were more feasible for daily wear back on the mainland. Backed by Hollywood, and the hippies, the shirts enjoyed some serious limelight (doesn’t get much bigger than Elvis) over the next decade. Yet, like most fads, they eventually faded from anything resembling "fashion", relegated instead to surf culture, and Chevy Chase movies.

Ah, but it was only a matter of time before designers found the Hawaiian shirt, as iconic American silhouettes are continuously pulled from the archives. And with temperatures rising into the unbearable, (and carefree, summer attitudes seeping) it’s hard to ignore the spirit of quite possibly the most jovial garment of all time (togas be damned). Just leave the cargo shorts, fanny packs, and flip flops at home. Please.
