Vintage Hawaiian

Welcome to the vintage hawaiian shirts and dresses section of our website. Vintage hawaiian shirts have become very popular with collectors over the years. 

 

The hawaiian shirt is also known as "Aloha shrit."  It said that this term got it's start on the streets in the early 1930s.  It was a term used for the growing number of shirts featuring Oriental and Hawaiian designs that were being produced by Honolulu tailors. Musa-Shiya, the Shirtmaker first advertised the "aloha shirt" in the Honolulu Advertiser on June 28, 1935: "Honolulu's Noted Shirt Maker and Kimono Shop. 'Aloha' shirts - well tailored, beautiful designs and radiant colors. Ready-made or made to order…95 cents up." By another account, an advertising salesperson from the Honolulu Advertiser and Ellery Chun, the owner of the King-Smith dry goods store, first coined the term "aloha shirt." In fact Mr. Chun officially registered a trademark for his Aloha sportswear on July 15, 1936.

 

The fact that celebrities have done a great job to promote hawaian shirts has also helped the enthusiasim behand collecting vintage hawaiian shirts. Montgomery Cliff Burt Lancaster, Ernest Borgnine and Frank Sinatra all wore beautiful Hawaiian shirts in the movie From Here to Eternity. Ginger Rogers wore seductive satin gowns of Hawaiian designs while Bing Crosby sported his unique combination of Hawaiian shirt and porkpie hat. And Betty Grable did a promo pin-up shot wearing a gorgeous Hawaiian-style swimsuit in the 1940s. In the 1980s, Tom Selleck often wore the signature "Magnum PI" Hawaiian shirt, which is now in the Smithsonian Institute. 

 

Vintage hawaiian dresses are also popular to collect.  The hawaiian dress also known as muumuu started out as a lose-fitting dress designed by the missionaries to cover the bodies of the hawaiian women who most of the time wore only grass skirts.  There are three types of muumuu: for informal entertaining, the pake muu featured long, wing-like sleeves based on a Chinese design. The popular tea-timer was a tight-fitting, tailored, sleeveless top with a short mandarin collar. The holomu was a fitted garment for more formal evening wear while the holoku was a full-length dress for formal affairs.

 

In the 1950s manufacturers began adding the magical phrase "Made in Hawaii" to their garment labels. (the idea allegedly came from a trade commissioner from Los Angeles during a visit to Hawaii in 1950). This new label increased the value and desirability of authentic Hawaiian shirts and dresses on the mainland and across the world. "Made in Hawaii" allowed true aloha wear to stand out in a market that was being flooded by cheap imitations and mail order garments. 

 

The "Made in Hawaii" tag makes the vintage hawaiian shirt all the more collectible.