HAWAIIAN SHIRT
Wp Lavori in Corso’s goal has always been to promote fashion linked to cultures and subcultures. Fashion’s archives is vivid and always updating: new clothing, accessories and books going in and out incessantly. WP Archivio aim to tell unknown stories and share topics to grow and make our community stronger.
No visitors to the island would consider a trip complete without an , something that they could wear that would show the world where they had been. A shirt, a dress, a hat, jewelry, an exotic scent. .. each has come under the Hawaiian spell and had taken forms that are emblematic of the Aloha Spirit.
The transforming power of the Aloha Spirit is evident in its fashions. They are the blending of the contributions of several cultures to create a new, unique product. That there are shirts and dresses at all is evidence of the influence of the 19th century missionaries who taught sewing and introduced Western styles of dress-shirts, trousers and dresses. The cotton and silk fabrics were introduced to the islands by the Chinese and Japanese, who traded them for sandalwood, and gradually took the place of bark cloth.
Starting with individual tailor shops and gradually building into small manufacturers, a clothing industry developed on the islands in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the 1920s Koichiro Miyamoto, a dry goods retailers, found himself with an abundance of English broadcloth, more than he could sell by the bolt. Taking the situation in hand he hired local seamstresses to transform the cloth into shirts, which he advertised locally as Musa-Shota the shirtmaker.
Other fabrics were added to the line, including patterned silks. Taking the traditional style of the palaka, a field hand’s woven plaid shirt , and making it in colorful exotic fabrics, Musa-Shota developed a shirt which he advertised as the Aloha Shirt in 1935. It has been known by this name ever since.
The bright bold fabric pattern were also developed into women’s styles of dress, including the muumuu, the Holoku, pake muu and tea timers. Their popularity as spread throughout the world, and the bold floral is imitated by fabric designers everywhere.
