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The History of the Hawaiian Shirt

History
پنجشنبه 28 فروردین 1399 ساعت 14:36
1744
Smith sonian mag
Mainland Americans have long looked to Hawaii to ease their minds. At the height of World War I, with America about to enter the conflict, Hawaiian music was all the rage. In 1916, Hawaiian records outsold all other genres, while ukuleles were so ubiquitous in college dorms and upper-crust nightclubs that the New York Tribune ran a full-page illustration of an imagined “Ukulele Square, the Hawaiian Quarter of New York.” During the Great Depression, Americans again cast their eyes toward Hawaii, co-opting another piece of Hawaiian culture: the aloha shirt.
Though its precise origins are lost to history, the aloha shirt first appeared in Hawaii in the 1920s or ’30s, probably when local Japanese women adapted kimono fabric for use in men’s shirting. The shirts achieved some popularity among tourists to Hawaii and found greater commercial success when they hit the mainland in the mid-1930s. America at the time was riddled with hardship and anxiety, with many men out of work and many others struggling to hold on to their breadwinner status. Perhaps in response, hyper-manliness came into vogue—the popularity of bodybuilding skyrocketed, Superman burst onto the scene. It may seem paradoxical that men embraced a garment with such feminine appeal. “You’d better get two or three because it’s a cinch your daughter, sister, wife or even mother will want this bright-colored shirt as soon as she sees it,” the Los Angeles Times teased in 1936. That didn’t stop men from buying. By 1940, aloha shirts were bringing in more than $11 million annually (in today’s money).
Elvis Presley is fashion florid as a gyrating tour guide in 1961's Blue Hawaii , a "South Seas musical hulaballoo"(Variety). (Paramount Pictures / Getty Images)
One reason men adopted a garment otherwise suited to their sisters’ closet was that rich, famous men wore it. Visitors to Hawaii in the 1930s were invariably wealthy, and before long, aloha shirts were being sold by celebrities whom everyday Americans sought to emulate. American heroes from three-time Olympic swimming champion and surfing pioneer Duke Kahanamoku to singer Bing Crosby were lending their names to particular brands. Those endorsements, says Dale Hope, a historian and the author of The Aloha Shirt: Spirit of the Islands , had “a huge effect on people purchasing those shirts.” If you could wear what the man unscathed by the Depression was wearing, it didn’t matter that it was feminine: You looked like someone who didn’t need to worry about his masculine bona fides.
Once the shirt reached stores in the Lower 48, any day laborer could have for just a dollar what before had required an exorbitant trip. A man in an aloha shirt, with its depictions of hula dancers and luaus—“symbol[s] of the comfortable, gay and picturesque,” one journalist put it in 1939—could look the part of the carefree swell.
The notion that Hawaii was a quiet paradise was shattered in 1941 with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and makers of aloha shirts, like others in the garment industry, turned to supplying the war effort. When production resumed, Japanese-influenced designs that had been common—featuring cherry blossoms and shrines—temporarily fell out of fashion, supplanted by designs that highlighted Hawaii’s local culture. Service members returning to the mainland from the Pacific made the signature apparel more popular than ever.
By the 1960s, the shirt had become truly ubiquitous. Aloha Fridays were a fixture of a certain kind of workplace, and everyone—from Elvis to the decidedly unhip Richard Nixon—seemed to have an aloha shirt. Over time, perhaps inevitably, it lapsed into the realm of corny suburban-dad-wear.
Yet in just the past five years, fashion magazines have been heralding a comeback, and high-end labels like Gucci are taking the aloha shirt to new heights, with prints that draw on Japanese designs favored in the garment’s early days. Meanwhile, some shirtmakers from Hawaii’s old guard are still going strong. Kahala , founded in 1936 as one of the first brands producing aloha shirts, has been raiding its vaults to reproduce designs dating back to the 1930s—including some popularized by Duke Kahanamoku. “People are looking to bring some light, some color, some vibrancy into their lives,” says Jason Morgan, Kahala’s general manager. “I think that’s needed now more than ever. If an aloha shirt can help improve somebody’s day, I think that’s pretty powerful.”
The Fine Print
Unbuttoning the history of the aloha shirt—Ted Scheinman and Teddy Brokaw
In many origin stories, Koichiro Miyamoto—better known as Musa-Shiya—created the aloha shirt; this design from the 1920s or 1930s includes Mount Fiji and other common Japanese images. (Patagonia Books)
Ellery Chun launched the iconic King-Smith brand and trademarked the term "aloha shirt." This pattern, possibly from as early as 1932, illustrates a move from Japanese to Hawaiian imagery. (Patagonia Books)
The singer and film star Bing Crosby, who endorsed a line of aloha shirts, shows off a pattern featuring hula dancers and palm trees in 1939. Crosby released several albums of Hawaiian music, recording such songs as "Sweet Leilani," "My Isle of Golden Dreams" and "Blue Hawaii." (NBC / Getty Images)
Rube Hauseman began creating aloha shirts in Hawaii in 1935, using fabrics from Musa-Shiya's store; with his surfer friends, Hauseman made a splash wearing these shirts at Honolulu's popular Rathskeller Bar. This design celebrates Hawaiian culture, focusing less on tourist experiences and more on islanders' idyllic way of life. (Patagonia Books)
This print, likely from the late 1940s or 1950s, is emblematic of "chop suey," a style of aloha shirt design that features a mishmash of Hawaiian imagery, which depicted how prospective tourists might spend their time on the islands. (Patagonia Books)
Soldiers in the U.S. Army's 25th Infantry Division arrive in Honolulu in 1954. Significantly, less than a decade after World War II, the aloha shirts they're wearing sport imagery inspired by Japan—swallows, a glimpse of Mount Fiji—which recall the shirt's origins. (The Life Picture Collection / Getty Images)
Elsie Das sold bold, colorful floral designs that emphasized the hibiscus; after World War II, this kind of pattern dominated the aloha shirts worn by prominent Americans, including Harry Truman and Richard Nixon. (Patagonia Books)
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