Finished a trio of non-fiction artbooks from the library all on the same subject:
The Art of the Aloha Shirt by
DeSoto Brown &
Linda Arthur, the latter of whom is a Professor at the University of Hawai'i and the curator of one of their museum collections, was a nice light intro to exactly what it says in the title.
Lots of pictures sprinkled throughout a good recounting of the origins, history, and rise to popularity of the Hawai'ian shirt (which the locals call the "Aloha shirt") throughout the decades, some sidebars on printing technology and famous persons associated with the shirt such as celebrity athlete Duke Kahanamoku (
Wikipedia), who parleyed his fame into a media licensing empire, and other forms of modern Hawai'ian dress based on hybridization of the respective cultures of the natives and the immigrants from the United States and East Asia.
The Aloha Shirt by Spirit of the Islands and
Dale Hope, a garment industry Creative Director, with
Greg Tozian, a part-time journalist, is even more in-depth, with info that builds considerably on some things that were briefly mentioned in the Brown/Arthur book.
This also has nifty sidebars with profiles/interviews of print-designers, Hawai'an culture promoters, and other creative types, as well as working conditions and trade connections in the early garment industry. Really quite nice, though not quite as quasi-scholarly in tone as Brown/Arthur.
The Hawaiian Shirt: Its Art and History by
H. Thomas Steele was much lighter than the others. A few pages of introductory background for each section before going into the photogalleries of different kinds of shirts and prints and advertising posters and such.
Overall, these were quite nice to read, with some interesting facts and fun trivia (and reproduction vintage racist advertising used to promote the shirts, even when they were being sold by an actual Japanese-descended shirtmaker, because apparently it was thought they wouldn't sell unless they were marketed that way; ah, Values Dissonance).
Apparently the TGIF "Casual Fridays" business culture undress code of the US can be traced back to late-40s "Aloha Week" promotions where Hawai'ian government officials would wear their aloha shirts to work on Fridays. And the explosion of actual aloha shirts on the mainland can be directly traced back to WWII and the military personnel stationed in the islands sending souvenirs back home, which Hollywood then picked up as a fad, with the encouragement of the Hawai'ian government, who'd send people to the mainland to promote stuff like that.
Also, it used to be the fashion for entire families to wear matching prints for their Hawai'ian clothing, which must have made them look weirdly cult-like. (But then, this might have been a tourist thing, like the stereotypically loud shirts, whereas native Hawai'ians favour muted prints made by turning the fabric inside out so that the more subdued, faded-looking "wrong side" would be the visible bit. And the sign of a truly quality aloha shirt is if the pocket matches the shirt pattern entirely, being near-indistinguishable from the background, even when the rest of the print goes unmatched at the front and sides.)
Recommended highly for the first two books if you've any interest in Hawai'ian modern history or popular fashion culture.