99% Invisible - Hawaiian Shirts: Articles of Interest #4

Episode Date: October 5, 2018

There are a few ways to tell if you’re looking at an authentic, high-quality aloha shirt. If the pockets match the pattern, that’s a good sign, but it’s not everything. Much of understanding an aloha shirt is about paying attention to what is on the shirt itself. It’s about looking at the pattern to see the story it tells. Articles of Interest is a show about what we wear; a six-part series within 99% Invisible, looking at clothing. It is produced and hosted by Avery Trufelman. Episodes will be released on Tuesdays and Fridays from September 25th through October 12th. Hawaiian Shirts: Articles of Interest #4

I was actually like low-key pretty good at it, who I'm not gonna lie. Sarah Burke grew up in Hawaii, just outside of Honolulu. When I was in high school, I visited New York for the first time, and noticed that a lot of vintage shops had all these super tacky Hawaiian shirts,

and then it was this cool thing to wear with like skinny jeans. Do you, this is like a thing, right? Yeah, that was totally a thing. And it's still kind of a thing now. These days, high-end designers are making versions of Hawaiian shirts. Hawaiian shirts are in style. And we just thought it was the most hilarious trend.

Like, why it just seemed so ridiculous to us to wear a Hawaiian shirt with Ray Bans. Like, we would never do that. Well, first of all, they wouldn't call them Hawaiian shirts. No one would say Hawaiian shirts. In Hawaii. That just sounds ridiculous. In Hawaii, they're Aloha shirts, and they're slightly different. The Aloha shirt is a very common thing to wear. In Hawaii, everyone has an Aloha shirt, and it doesn't look the same as a Hawaiian shirt.

I don't know about you, but I think of Hawaiian shirts as having like, teaky heads and bikini ladies on them. Aloha shirts are a little more professional. Aloha shirts are like more toned down, you know, like really tasteful floral prints. If you're going out to a nice occasion, you would wear an Aloha shirt. Really? Yeah, it's a very common thing, most men own one, but it's definitely still a product of colonization. You know what I mean? Like, it's not like, back in the day, Native Hawaiians were all walking around in like a low-ha shards, you know what I mean?

Articles of interest. A show about what we wear. And so maybe the idea is about clothing. You can attach ideas about class. An idea of home to a piece of cloth. These are glass, or a macaque, or a macaque. I want it. Any fork and wear clothes.

But if you haven't got the attitude and style to carry it off, man, you're just the closed balls. And then we make markers, which are the jigsaw pieces of the shirt. That is the sound of an Aloha shirtmaker wielding a giant industrial blade. And he is cutting through about 50 layers of brightly patterned fabric, stacked in a pile. He's cutting all of the puzzle pieces out. And these cut pieces of fabric will fit together like a perfectly planned jigsaw puzzle. And so the stack of 50 fabric squares will create 50 Aloha shirts.

Is the back of the shirt? That's the placket? That's the front panels? That's the yoke? There's the collars and the pocket over there. Jason Morgan, the general manager of Kahala Sportswear, has shown me around Kahala's factory and design studio on Oahu. Kahala makes Aloha shirts, and it's actually one of the earliest companies to do so. It's been around since 1936.

And as Jason and I watch this worker, definitely cut out the puzzle pieces in the stacks of shirts. You can see that all the different parts are strategically placed along the pattern of the fabric. So Jason informs me with pride. So we always match our pocket. And so that is why that pocket is specifically placed right there. When Jason says match the pocket, he means that the breast pocket of the shirt doesn't disrupt the overall pattern. Like the breast pocket will be a continuation of the design so that it blends in at first blush. You don't even notice it.

It looks like it's a lot of extra effort. It's a lot of extra effort. It signifies a higher quality garment, just more attention to detail. There are a few ways to tell if you're looking at a real authentic high-quality aloha shirt. If the pocket matches the pattern, that's a good sign, but it's not the be-all-end-all. Much of the understanding of an aloha shirt is about paying attention to what is on the shirt itself. If it tells a story and it has real references that are specific to Hawaii. If there's a fish in the print, we know what fish that is and that you can find it out

here in the waters around the islands. You know, we're not going to slap something on a shirt just to do it because it looks cool. It's not about a fantasy vacation land. It's about a real place. All the animals, all the fruit, all the landmarks will all be real and significant to Hawaii or to the many cultures that have melted into it. How would you describe this?

So this is a classic, a pario. And the pario is just a simple, one-colored ground, one-color print. The pario print is a classic pattern of cahalas since the 60s. It's white flowers on a solid color background. This pario pattern features breadfruit flowers, because breadfruit was a primary staple of a lot of Polynesian cultures. Going back to what they call the canoe plants, which were the plants that the Polynesians took with them as they explored Polynesia. And as they explored, Polynesian sailors discovered Hawaii

and migrated there in significant numbers. These kinds of specific cultural references, or rather specific multicultural references, are what makes the difference between a loha wear and resort wear. Resort wear is global in its appeal, whereas a loha wear is more informed by what makes Hawaii unique. It's something that, you know,

bankers wear in downtown Honolulu. And it's true, bankers are in a Loahah shirts in downtown Honolulu. Everybody is. They even wear them for funerals. And part of the logic of Aloha attire is, of course, there's just too hot in Hawaii to wear a suit. But that doesn't explain why the shirts are so colorful

and patterned and fun. They could have just as well worn plain white shirts, hypothetically. Truly, to understand the origins of the shirt, one must understand the origins of the state. Aloha kaahihah. Bleh. Got to pronounce it correctly. Aloha kaahihaka. Bleh. Got to pronounce it correctly.

Aloha kaha kaha kaha. That's good morning in Hawaiian. This is Zita Cup Choi, the historian of Yolani Palace. Yolani Palace is the last official residence of the monarchs who ruled Hawaii as a combined kingdom for 100 years and whose predecessors ruled here for over a thousand years prior to that. Ulaani Palace is the only actual bonafide palace on United States soil. Thornroom, ballroom, reception room, formal receptions here.

Receptions in the blue room would have included food beverages and entertainment. Ulaani Palace is truly elegant with sumptuous wooden staircases and crystal glassware, and what was then cutting-edge technology. They had electricity in 1887. Four years before the White House in Washington, D.C. The king also installed a telephone. Oh, yeah, by 1889, Honolulu probably had more phones per person than any other city of the same size anywhere else in the world.

This is all just to say, Hawaii as an independent constitutional monarchy transcended its tiny geography. The kingdom was technologically advanced and known diplomatically all over the world. Queen Lidio Kalani, our last monarch, is in the portrait on the wall over here. In this portrait, she is wearing the gown that was created to be worn at Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee in London. Lillio Kalani became Queen of Hawaii in 1891. And she was a musician as well. She was a musician, she composed over 150 different songs, including Aloha Oy.

It's a really famous song. Aloha Oy is actually a love song. Aloha Oy means goodbye to you. It was written in 1878. She saw a woman and a man saying goodbye to each other. And it was such a touching scene as she was coming home. She's humming and writing in her head. She had a wonderful ability to write songs.

So we're talking about Liliokolani because she's a major character in the story of how Hawaii became a territory and then part of the United States, which led to the rise of the Aloha shirt. And in many ways, this all starts with sugar. Sugar became a minor industry until the Civil War, when the sugar planters in the United States could no longer grow because they were fighting the war. So the sugar indices skyrocketed in influence and in income. Most of the sugar plantations were owned by Americans and Europeans. Many of the Hawaiians may not have had the money

to be able to buy the property, some of the immigrants did, particularly those that have family that have money. The European and American sugar magnets who had been setting up plantations all over the Hawaiian islands worked their way into the legislature of Hawaii to give themselves better deals on shipping and tariffs. They imposed a constitution that dramatically reduced the power of the monarchy into more of a figurehead.

The constitution also allowed non-Hawaiian citizens to vote. And allowed non-citizen residents of American and European ancestry. Basically, it was those who could read or write English or some other European language to vote. So, it disenfranchised more native Hawaiians, left out the huge Chinese community. She's already in the Europeans, what why can't we? This allowed American and European business interest to meddle in Hawaiian government even more. And so, with what little power she had, Lili O'Kallani tried to get that imposed constitution repealed.

Her attempts to put into effect a new constitution caused a group of 13 local residents of American and European ancestry to create the Committee of Public Safety to protect their own interests. That's a group that deposed Lili O'Kallani. The long and short of it is that well-connected businessmen used the U.S. military as backing for a coup.

In 1893, the monarchy was overthrown and a provisional government was established, and the queen was accused of treason. And then they arrested Lady O'Colani. They brought her here to this room. This is called the imprisonment room. This is where she was held under house arrest, very sparsely furnished, and initially no writing materials. For eight months, Liliokolani was prisoner in this front room of Ilani Palace, where the

sunlight streams in hot. And for lack of writing materials, Liliokolani and her one permitted companion, Sode. She made a quilt from brocaded silk fabrics and ribbons from her own wardrobe, and she stitched them with the names of her friends and supporters. Embroidered are the words imprisoned at Yolani Palace. And that says we began this quilt there, which means they completed it elsewhere. The quilt was probably completed after Liliokalani

moved to her private residence down the street, where she continued her life as a private citizen until she died in 1917. She was considered until her death as queen of Hawaii. And respected as such. And the queen's quilt would not be the last time a story of Hawaii would be told in cloth. From overthrow to statehood, Hawaii was in sort of limbo as a territory.

The sugar industry had changed everything, from the Constitution to the configuration of the government, to the actual makeup of the population of the Hawaiian islands. The Hawaiian islands from the late 1800s up to 1924 were the scene of many different immigrants coming in to work in the sugar industry. The sugar plantation owners, mostly white Americans and Europeans, recruited field workers from China, Korea, the Philippines, and Portugal. But the main group came from Japan. This is Decioto Brown, the historian at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu. And the federal government of the United States ended Asian immigration in 1924, but by that

time, the population of Hawaii was about 40% ethnically Japanese. So on Hawaii, there was a huge market for Japanese products, including Japanese fabric. The Japanese fabric was a width which was made specifically for kimonos, which is the Japanese national costume. And there was one particular company in downtown Honolulu that was called Musesuya. Musesuya sold Japanese fabric and you could go in and choose the fabric you liked and they would make a shirt for you. So you could buy a western style collard shirt made out of kimono fabric.

It became a fun special thing to buy, especially for the youths. By about 1936 or 37, local manufacturers then began to have fabric custom made with tropical or Pacific or Hawaiian motifs in addition to the Japanese motifs which were already available. Kahala, the company you heard cutting the piles of shirts, was established in 1936, and it was one of the first to mass produce alohha shirts. Because these shirts sold like hotcakes as souvenirs, when Americans first started coming to Hawaii on mass, as soldiers and as tourists. And so it was always intended to be like souvenir shirts.

GIs, there is the desire to have something as a reminder, a token, a souvenir of the experience. And then when they went back home after World War II and all that, they brought that trend back with them. But Aloha shirts were still niche. People didn't wear them around in a real way. Even on the territory of Hawaii, it looked like the West had won.

Everyone was dressed like they lived in an American metropolis. Prior to 1962, it wouldn't be unusual to see everybody in downtown Honolulu wearing a suit and tie. You know, it'd be 90 degrees outside with 90% humidity and everyone's walking around a suit and tie. It's ridiculous. This is Josh Feldman, CEO of Tori Richard, which is a resort wear company and the parent

company of Kahala, the Aloha wear manufacturer. So Josh's father, Mort Feldman, was the founder of the company. And even he, the founder of a resort-ware company, used to wear a suit and tie to work every day. My father in the 1950s and 60s, he's wearing like a total madman suit, you know, pocket square. I mean, it's a dapper-looking guy,

but it's kind of farcical, right, that in the middle of the Pacific, on a kind of tropical island, and you're wearing a suit and tie to work every day. Josh's father joined forces with some other Aloha attire manufacturers, and they formed a lobbying group called the Hawaiian Fashion Guild. And in 1962, they began a campaign

called Operation Liberation. It's all campaign called Operation Liberation. It's all started with Operation Liberation, which was to get men to wear Aloha Tire in the summer months. In Operation Liberation, the Hawaiian fashion guild gave each state representative and senator to Aloha shirts. And then, they took it a step further. They decided, let's lobby and get the state legislature just the state legislature on Fridays

to wear products from Hawaii manufacturers. They got a resolution passed in 1967 formally creating a Loha Fridays. Formally creating a Loha Friday that required all the state legislatures to wear this product. That meant every Friday members of the state legislature wore a low-hashirts. And then that spreads to the business community as a way to support the manufacturers.

And then people once they started doing that, they're like, hey, this is a heck of a lot more comfortable than wearing a suit. And that went on for a number of years and pretty much every day became a low-hash Friday. On any given day of the week in downtown Honolulu, you can see people in a low-hush shirts. Not in a Jimmy Buffett vacation kind of way, it's a workplace casual kind of way. And to this day, this especially ramps up on Fridays. And if you live in the mainland United States, this notion of a casual Friday might sound vaguely familiar to you.

Casual Friday has its origins with a low-hot Friday. And Casual Friday would go on to affect how we all dress at work. Not just in Hawaii, all over the United States. The Casual Friday campaign started and everyone credits dockers. Dockers is a company that makes khakis, and they are owned by Levi Strauss jeans. They fully acknowledge that the concept was created here. They do. We're here on the West Coast, a loha and the prince.

Once a loha shirt hit the scene, Levi's started manufacturing them. We'd actually been doing a loha shirt since the 30s. I hear a Levi Strauss in company. This is Tracy Panic, historian at Levi Strauss in company. But you needed a companion piece, and we introduced in the early, in the 90s, we introduced the idea to human resources departments that you could let your workers come to work,

dress one day a week in something a little bit more casual, dockers, for instance. And with dockers, Levi's really created the concept of business casual wear, which they then sold to businesses. We took the idea to human resources departments. In fact, we created a kit, how to put casual business wear to work. And we sent thousands around to HR departments, and in it, it included a guide to what was appropriate wear.

And in this guide that we're looking at, here's a man dressed in his docker slacks and a collared shirt and other clothing that he could wear. A Loha Friday came from Hawaii, but Casual Friday came from Levi Strauss and Company. We are credited Levi Strauss and Company for creating business casual Fridays, this business casual movement.

And now it's not just one day a week. A business casual for many workplace environments is okay all through the week. This might be one of the largest seismic shifts in recent fashion history. This turn to casual. A cotton and orlon dress with detachable collar and cuffs and plastron buttoned front. Goodbye silk ties and garters and stockings and knowing how, and a plasgron buttoned front. Goodbye, silk ties, and garters, and stockings, and knowing how to use an iron. Ship shapes the word.

Hello, to CEOs in sweatshirts. And it's not that casual Friday invented casual wear. That is a much larger phenomenon that has its roots in the rise of leisure time and the rise of sportswear and the influx of college students stressing more practically to traverse campuses. What casual Friday gave us was a foot in the door to help casual wear spread into public life. Where does casual break in terms of when does it start to be worn to churches? Regional specific. This is Deirdre Clemente, historian of 20th century clothing and fashion,

an author of the book Dress Casual. And she says business casual was this tipping point, because the office was kind of the last vestige of everyday formal wear. The office was the last place to break, which I think because it's such a public front, the places where people had more interaction with clients, like maybe banks, say, or somebody who was a sales rep who had to go into it, those guys kept the most formal elements of clothes. And yes, many bankers and politicians still wear suits.

But for a lot of industries now where workers sit in front of a computer, they don't need to change into heels or iron a jacket. I think casual dress speaks to Americans desire to be comfortable. It speaks to our desire to create in many ways a classless society. Or at least the appearance of a classless society. So I think the rise of casual dress in the United States speaks to America as a nation where everybody considers themselves middle class,

no matter who you ask. 70% of Americans, poor or wealthy, call themselves middle class. Casual dress really speaks to everyone's who would have wanted to dress more towards the socioeconomic middle than the edges. It's almost uncool to dress up too much now. Dressing up would call too much attention to yourself, and in that way, the aloha shirt is a beautiful

aberration. When I think of aloha shirts, I think of my dad because my dad wears almost solely aloha shirts. He has probably a hundred aloha shirts because he wears one to work every single day, and he's like obsessed with buying different ones, where he'll get really into the pattern and be like, oh, I really like this textile or whatever. And a low-hushert is bright. And a low-hushert is colorful and bold. And it tells a story.

Yes, about a fish or a bird or a plant, but also quietly about the whole history of a little chain of islands that left an Words from yesterday. There's a portrait painted on the things we love. Articles of interest is made by myself, Avery Truffleman, edited by Joe Rosenberg, music by Ray Royal, intro and outro themes by Sassami Ashworth, fact check by Graham Haysha, mixed by Kelly Coin, and Roman Mars is the big kahuna of this whole series.

Thank you to Dale Hope, Linda Arthur Bradley, Vic Wong and the Alcatraz Islanders, Quora Currier, and Michelle Leigh at Jam's World, as well as Katie Mingle, Vivian Lee, Delaney Hall, Kirk Kohlstead, Shreep Youssef, Seanry Al, Emmett Fitzgerald, and the whole 99PI team. Mahalo. There's a portrait of painting the things we love. The rise of casual wear in many ways has been the rise of synthetics. You start to see America's really accepting synthetic fibers, acrylic fibers going into

sweaters, dachron, all that kind of stuff, you know, all the name brand, DuPont sponsored, fibers going into sweaters, menswear, huge menswear, with synthetic fibers breaking, huge. For good reasons, we are sick of trying to fit into our clothes, and we want our clothes to fit us. We want stretch. We want a little give. We want flexibility, which comes at a price. Your next article of interest is denim. Radio Topeo. From PRX.