Spirit of Aloha | Articles | Under the Hula Moon | January/February 2005

Under the Hula Moon
By: JOCELYN FUJIII

The Real Thing

Feel this aloha shirt. Isn’t it sumptuous? Such fine, draped silk—quite a hand, as they say in the business. Coconut buttons. The classic collar. And the fabric design—tropical flowers, surfers, Diamond Head—the emblems of our beloved lifestyle. Long live Hawai‘i! Well, almost. Look closely. More often than not these days, the label reads Made in China or Made in Taiwan. If it’s a “Hawaiian” quilt or a lau hala placemat, it could be made in the Philippines, Thailand or Indonesia. Whatever it is—a shirt, a bobbing hula girl, a sarong or a candle shaped like a coconut tree—it’s very likely foreign-made.

But here I am, browsing at Hilo Hattie. I like this place—plenty of kitsch, as in hula-girl candles and plastic palm-frond swizzle sticks. I spy the cascade of lei draping the wall—pikake, puakenikeni, you name it. And all faux, even the yarn lei. The soup of the soup of the soup, and all very realistic, and made not in Hawai‘i. My friend and I pause at the “yarn” lei, made of fabric to look like yarn. “The yarn lei,” she muses. “Who could ever throw a yarn lei away? It takes a lot of time to make one, and it’s always made by someone elderly.” We chuckle at the rich ironies of the world around us, the ersatz universe of made-to-look-like-Hawai‘i products. Then we move on to the aloha shirts.

Hilo Hattie has a wide range of them in all price ranges, from name brands to its own label, made in Hawai‘i and not. Does it really matter if a label reads Made in Hawai‘i? The ubiquity of Hawai‘i-themed objects in the global marketplace makes this a particularly prickly question. For me, certainly, it matters. It galls me to see chichi Western designers lifting images and themes from Hawai‘i designers, printing them on their aloha shirts and sarongs and selling them for triple the price. But I feel differently about Island manufacturers who use local artists for fabric design and manufacture in Asia, because of legal requirements and cost issues.

Carol Pregill, president of Retail Merchants of Hawai‘i, fills me in on the aloha shirt conundrum. “For a product to be labeled Made in Hawai‘i, 51 percent of its wholesale value has to be added in the state of Hawai‘i,” she tells me. Because fabric isn’t made in Hawai‘i, and because there’s a shortage of people here willing to sew, she says, manufacturers, driven by high demand and economic forces, rely on factories abroad.

That’s why labels like Sig Zane Designs of Hilo and Tutuvi in Honolulu are the gods of Island wear. The garments are brilliantly designed, incorporate meaningful Island themes and are screen-printed and made in Hawai‘i. And they are much imitated, too. I once saw a blatant copy of Zane’s plumeria design on a pricey Italian shirt, selling at one of Hawai‘i’s most elegant department stores for triple the Hilo price.

The up side of this phenomenon is that the aloha shirt has become a mainstream garment, even on the Mainland. Vintage aloha shirts, now affordable in the contemporary print reproductions of Avanti, have gone from Hollywood films to the boardroom. When Ellery Chun, a Yale graduate and first mass producer of aloha shirts, died in May 2000, his obituary and photo ran in The New York Times.

Sometimes, made-in-Hawai‘i products, such as Kona or Moloka‘i sea salt (Hawaiian salt from Hanapepe, Kaua‘i, is most desirable, but can’t be sold), Hawai‘i vanilla, Kona coffee and designer mango chutney may be too pricey for everyday use, but are perfect for special occasions and as gifts for friends offshore. Big Island Candies’ chocolate-dipped shortbread cookies come to mind (and who couldn’t devour them daily?), as well as Tahitian Goddess chutneys and anything from the Hilo Farmers Market. Hawai‘i lavender has risen in prominence, thanks to pioneer Alice Humbert of Island Herbal and Hawaiian Spa products, made of Waimea-grown lavender from the Big Island, and Maui Lavender and Ali‘i Kula Lavender on Maui. The only certified organic liliko‘i jelly in the state, introduced by Una Greenaway of Kulaiwi Farm in Kona, will be available in January.

And what about the consummate symbol of Hawai‘i, the lei? Flower lei dominate this art form, but its pinnacle is the Niihau shell lei. I bow to the Ni‘ihau families who gather the shells, clean and pierce them, stringing them into lustrous, multicolored ropes of aloha that may take generations to complete. Heart and soul, love of place, nature and tradition—it’s all there in a single strand. Now that is Made in Hawai‘i

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