Hunt for the Perfect Hawaiian Shirt

Happy Hour had drawn too quickly to a close, and my wife and I were wandering through Wailea Shopping Village, arguing over whether it was the Big Dipper or the Little Dipper up there among the thousands of stars in the Maui sky, when suddenly I saw something in a store window that took my breath away: It was the shirt Montgomery Clift wore in “From Here to Eternity.”

I rushed into Sgt. Leisure’s Cabana just as Ann Rinker was about to shut down for the night. “A replica, of course,” she said. But to one who truly loves Hawaiian shirts, as I do, this was the Mona Lisa of shirts. It even had a name, as all great Hawaiian shirts do: “Diamond Head.” Beside it in the store window was a replica of “Blue Hawaii,” the shirt Elvis Presley had worn in the 1963 movie of the same name.

“They’re both here in this book,” Rinker said, showing me a copy of “The Hawaiian Shirt,” by H. Thomas Steele. “In this business, it’s like the Bible.”

I had the book at home. I was in Hawaii, after all, in search of the Perfect Hawaiian Shirt. It was a 12-day quest that took in 55 stores on Maui, Kauai and the Big Island.

Among collectors, there’s little disagreement over what makes a Hawaiian shirt great. It has to look like the shirts of the Golden Age of Hawaiian Shirts, the ‘30s and ‘40s. It should have a pajama collar and coconut-shell buttons. It should be made of rayon or silk. The pattern should form an unbroken whole across the pockets, the front placket and the shoulder seam. The design should be purely representational--orchids, palms, outrigger canoes, hula maidens; no geometrics or abstractions. Most importantly, it should make you crack a grin when you look at it.

All I asked beyond these rules was that the shirt look good on me. A pretty big demand, as I was to learn. Price mattered, but I wanted to look at everything.

*

The next morning we stopped at Hilo Hattie in the Lahaina Center, one of six Hilo Hatties in the state. I whipped past the $15.99 polyesters and the his-and-hers matching shirts and went straight to the Hawaiian Collection racks. The shirts here were rayon, cost $47.99 and seemed to be pretty good imitations of the great shirts of yesteryear. The buttons were right, and the designs were continuous. I found a real beauty with a blue and black background and a picture of a protea flower in salmon and gray. Still, Hilo Hattie, a tourist chain, for the Perfect Hawaiian Shirt?

Our next stop was the upscale Whalers Village, on the beach at Kaanapali Resort. In the four stores that sold quality Hawaiian shirts, my wife and I were the only customers. This was true throughout our entire trip; only in superstores, and in one exceptional antique store, were there other customers. Store clerks everywhere said business was way down now that tourism from Japan was shrinking. There were even some sales, at the peak of the summer season. At the Sgt. Leisure’s store in Whalers Village, for instance, I found a well-made Fivecrowns shirt with a cigar theme marked down from $54 to $24.95.

Across the way at Reyn’s, high prices remained the rule. I found nothing for less than $62.50, and the Thai silks cost $130. Reyn Spooner has been the Hilo Hattie of the upscale market for more than 35 years, with 10 stores on four islands. The first Reyn Spooner store opened in 1959 in Honolulu. It was a partnership between Catalina haberdasher Reynolds McCullough and his friend Ruth Spooner, who made surf trunks in Waikiki. The business took off in 1966, when the Hawaii Fashion Guild, of which McCullough was a member, convinced Honolulu businessmen to proclaim Aloha Fridays, on which office workers were encouraged to wear casual clothing.

At the Whalers Village Reyn’s, I found a shirt I really liked: “On the Radio,” for $85. On a navy, red or black background, the shirt design consisted of detailed drawings of floor-model radios from the ‘30s, art moderne table radios from the ‘40s and cheap transistor radios from the ‘50s. But the shirt was so tasteful, so polite, so Brooks Brothers that it barely seemed Hawaiian. And thus my search continued.

Before we left Whalers Village, we found a replica of another famous Hawaiian shirt, “Bird Airbrush.” Tom Selleck wore it in the 1980s TV show “Magnum P.I.,” and the original is in the Smithsonian. It was red, with green palm leaves and a purple and gold parrot. The shirt, in a store named Tropical Palm, had a nice heft to it, and I was thinking about parting with $50 for it. And then I considered what the gang at the office would say: “It may be Tom Selleck’s shirt, but you’re no Tom Selleck.”

*

The next morning we headed out to Wailuku’s Market Street, on the other side of the island, in the heart of Maui’s antique district. I had long heard that vintage Hawaiian shirts in good condition were becoming scarce. In fact, I found only five of them in Bird of Paradise, a store recommended to me as a best bet. As we left the store and headed to lunch, my wife spotted a dazzling display of Hawaiian shirts in front of a store called Gilbert’s Formal Wear. “Wow!” I said. “These are genuine Kamehamehas! They’ve been making these since 1936!”

Rhonda Hirata, 14, and her grandmother, Hisako, told us that although their cluttered time-warp shop had been in the same location for 50 years, the shirts were brand new. They showed us some really loud florals for $56. One was a replica of “Coconut Palms,” a rayon 1940s royal blue shirt with red, yellow and green coconut palms. We were on the right track now, but not quite at the station.

I was beginning to get discouraged. In Kihei, on the road back to our hotel, my wife spotted the Maui Clothing Outlet and ordered me to stop the car. She wanted to pick up some bargain shorts as souvenirs for our daughter. Bingo! I found $50 Kahalas for $24.99 and a $55 Tori Richard for $33.95. The store was a treasure. The selection was vast. My eyes were drawn, though, to a display of shirts that hardly lived up to any collector’s standards.

The brand was RJC--no tradition, no cachet. The material was cotton, not silk or rayon. One was royal blue, with a supremely busy pattern. But not as busy as another one I saw. This one was black with orange, yellow and white flowers, green and brown palm trees, an orange and blue statue of King Kamehameha in front of a green temple under a blue and white sky, and a pale orange desert island on which was moored a red and blue canoe under a baby blue sky in a deep blue sea with a pale orange mountain in the background. Oh, yes, there were also signs saying “Legends of Hawaii” in two shades of orange. The shirts were only $29.99 apiece, and my wife said they looked good on me. I bought them.

*

A few days later on the Big Island, where we had rented a condo, we found Hula Heaven at the Kona Inn Shopping Center. This was truly the Louvre of Hawaiian shirts. On two walls hung collections of famous Hawaiian shirts--not replicas, the real things. “I have a couple of hundred vintage shirts here,” owner Evan Olins told us, “and hundreds and hundreds at home.” Olins has owned the store for 20 years. He said that, as far as he knows, in all the world only his store and Bailey’s Antiques and Aloha Shirts in Honolulu still had “sizable” collections of antique Hawaiian shirts for sale. Olins’ prices ran from $15 to $5,000. Bailey’s, I learned later, has more than 600 vintage shirts, for about $200 to $3,000.

On one wall, I spotted what looked like “Diamond Head,” the “From Here to Eternity” shirt. “That’s $1,500,” Olins said, “the shirt Montgomery Clift wore, but in brown.”

And that black shirt with all the surfboards hanging down from way above the cash register, why was it up and out of reach? “Oh,” Olins said, “that’s my $5,000 shirt. It’s one of very few all-surfboard shirts that were made. The black background makes it more valuable to collectors because it sets off the pattern so well.”

I wasn’t about to consider any of Olins’ pricey shirts, but I did see a new Tori Richard model that radiated good cheer. It showed Waikiki’s pink Royal Hawaiian Hotel and a boy in surfer trunks, with surfboard nearby. A girl in a swimsuit was sunbathing on a towel. The two front panels lined up perfectly, and from front to back the shirt formed a continuous panorama. The price was $78, not too steep for art of this quality, I thought. But still, how many times could I wear it? It was just too distinctive.

The Royal Hawaiian Hotel was pictured in several of the earliest Hawaiian shirts, and for good reason. Hawaiian shirts as we know them first appeared in 1929, two years after the Royal Hawaiian was finished; it was by far the most striking element in the Honolulu skyline. The shirts were created mostly by first- and second-generation Chinese and Japanese tailors to stir up business that had sagged as a result of the Depression.

They made their shirts from kimono fabrics in a shiny, new material called rayon that DuPont introduced in 1924. The shirts didn’t really catch on until 1936, when a shirt maker named Ellery Chun decided to mass-produce them to sell for $1 apiece at a Honolulu store he owned called King-Smith. “What Ellery Chun really did,” said Olins of Hula Heaven, “was to give the Hawaiian shirt a name--the ‘aloha shirt.’ ”

Soon the making of Hawaiian shirts became a folk art, with manufacturers hiring professional artists to design their wares. Shirts became ever more detailed, and photos were often included in the designs to guarantee their realism. We were about to see two stunning examples of this as we drove to the Big Island’s Kohala Coast and parked at Kings’ Shops in Waikoloa. At a store called Kunahs, I found a Tori Richard shirt depicting foods eaten by Hawaiians of Japanese descent--steak, sashimi, ahi and Spam musubi cakes. At $40.95, this was a steal for a Tori Richard shirt, but Spam musubi just wasn’t me.

*

With three days to go, we flew to Kauai. At the Coconut Market Place in Kapaa, we looked over Mary Dunn’s collection of 21 mint-condition vintage shirts at the Islander Trading Co. All were packaged in clear plastic, with labels naming the manufacturer, fabric and vintage. They started at $150. The one I liked best was a light green 1940s silk crepe de Chine showing an island maiden holding a bowl of fruit, with palms and maps of Hawaii in the background. The colors remained bright and vivid. But it was the most expensive shirt in the store, at $750.

On Kauai’s North Shore, we stopped at Hong Lung in Kilauea, an eclectic store chockablock with bric-a-brac, vases, fans and dinnerware. The second floor was dedicated to vintage clothing. We found 10 antique Hawaiian shirts from famous makers--Kahala, Reyn Spooner and Tori Richard among them--at $10 to $15. But they were too beaten-up and faded for me.

We drove past one beautiful white-sand beach after another on the road to Hanalei, home of the Yellowfish Trading Co., a Hawaiiana shop with a collection of 30 antique shirts. The most expensive of them was $325. It was a 1940s Liberty House model showing the sun setting over the Pacific in a windstorm, with leaning palms.

This was the second-to-last day of our trip. I still hadn’t found the perfect shirt. We stopped at the Hilo Hattie in Lihue and spotted a gleaming black rayon number with twining heliconia blossoms in yellow, green and orange, for $47.99. I thought it looked nice on me, but my wife said I needed a brighter color, maybe blue.

As we pulled out, my wife reminded me of her own personal quest: to find bargain shorts for our daughter. “Look!” she said. “A Wal-Mart!” I was astonished to find a rack of presentable Hawaiian shirts. In fact, the heliconia shirt was there, for only $29.96. And it also came in royal blue. It was quite becoming, my wife said.

My Perfect Hawaiian Shirt at Wal-Mart? I would sleep on it.

We walked to dinner at a pizzeria on the grounds of the Kiahuna Plantation, where we were staying. As we waited to be seated, we watched other diners wandering in, including an unkempt couple wearing his-and-hers Hawaiian shirts. Royal blue heliconia shirts. My shirts.

It was then that I realized that the Perfect Hawaiian Shirt was already in my suitcase. It was the busy black one from the Maui Clothing Outlet. I had loved it unconditionally from the moment I saw it. Why should I care what collectors might say? I named it “Legends of Hawaii” and flew home the next day a happy man.

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GUIDEBOOK

Shirt Stops

On Maui: Bird of Paradise, 56 N. Market St., Wailuku; telephone (808) 242-7699. Gilbert’s, 104 N. Market St., Wailuku; tel. (808) 244-4017. Hilo Hattie, Lahaina Center, 900 Front St., Lahaina; tel. (800) 272-5282, Internet https://commerce.secureinput.com/hilo/aboutus.html. Maui Clothing Outlet, 362 Huku Li’i Place, Kihei; tel. (808) 875-0308. Moonbow Tropics, 36 Baldwin Ave., Paia; tel. (808) 579-8592. Paia Plantation Store, Baldwin Ave. across from Moonbow Tropics, Paia; (808) 579-8601. Reyn’s, Whalers Village, 2435 Kaanapali Parkway, Kaanapali; tel. (808) 661-9032, Internet https://www.reyns.com. Sgt. Leisure’s Cabana, 3750 Wailea Alanui Drive, Wailea; tel. (808) 874-5647. Tropical Palm, Whalers Village, 2435 Kaanapali Highway, Kaanapali; tel. (808) 661-1939.

On the Big Island: Hilo Hattie, 75-5597A Palani Road, Kailua-Kona; tel. (800) 272-5282. Hula Heaven, 75-5744 Alii Drive, Kailua-Kona; tel. (808) 329-7885. Kane by Malia, 250 Waikoloa Beach Drive, Waikoloa; tel. (808) 886-7756 or (808) 886-1615. Kona Sports, Kona Marketplace, 75-5927R Alii Drive, Kailua-Kona; tel. (808) 326-2415. Kunahs, Waikoloa Beach Drive, Waikoloa; tel. (808) 886-6422.

On Kauai: Hilo Hattie, 3252 Kuhio Highway, Lihue; tel. (800) 272-5282. Reinventions at Hong Lung, Keneke St. at Lighthouse Drive, Kilauea; tel. (808) 828-0126. Islander Trading Co., Coconut Market Place, Kapaa; tel. (808) 822-3333. Kohala Bay, Sheraton Kauai, 2440 Hoonani Road, Koloa, Poipu; tel. (808) 742-7872. Overboard, Coconut Market Place, Kapaa; tel. (808) 822-1778. Reyn’s, Hyatt Regency, 1571 Poipu Road, Poipu; tel. (808) 742-7279. Wal-Mart, 3-3300 Kuhio Highway, Lihue; tel. (808) 246-1599. Yellowfish Trading Co., Hanalei Center, Kuhio Highway, Hanalei; tel. (808) 826-1227.