The most colorful and complete book published on the most enduring souvenir ever invented: the Hawaiian shirt.
Beautifully illustrated with hundreds of images, this book recounts the colorful stories behind these marvelous shirts: as cultural icons, evocative of the mystery and the allure of the islands, capturing the vibe of the watermen culture and lifestyle — casual, relaxed, and fun. Valued by professional collectors and by millions of vacationers and fashionistos, these shirts are enjoying a fashion revival.
Drawing from hundreds of interviews, newspaper and magazine archives, and personal memorabilia, the author evokes the world of the designers, seamstresses, manufacturers, and retailers who created the industry and nurtured it from its single-sewing-machine-shop beginnings to an enterprise of international scope and importance and its revival today.
The Aloha Shirtis both a dazzling, fun-to-browse art book, and a fascinating chronicle of the world’s love affair with Hawaii.
There are pages and pages of close-ups of vintage Hawaiian shirts, and it's fun to study the details, but it's the history of Hawaii alongside this theme that makes this book a deep dive and an escape read at the same time. --
Mother Nature NetworkIn those days, writes Dale Hope in “The Aloha Shirt: Spirit of the Islands,” a lovely $60 hardcover to be published next month by Patagonia, the flowered garments were “bright badges of good fortune, like stamps on a passport.” --The New York Times
Cultural icon and bon vivant Homer Simpson has opined that the only people who wear Hawaiian shirts are gay guys and big, fat party animals. Hope and Tozian put the lie to Homer in a lush, loving look at aloha shirts and the industry that provides them. Part fashion history, part cultural exploration, the marvelously well-illustrated tome examines the rise of Hawaii's image as a tourist's paradise, a l³'
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