No. 011 - Reyn Spooner, Sugar plantation print

THE DESIGN

Brand: Reyn Spooner
Print: Sugar plantation (mahi kō); reverse print
Material: 60% Cotton, 40% Polyester
Style - Half-button down with white plastic buttons; single pocket
Tailored in Hawaiʻi with imported fabric

THE SPECS

I was reminded by a friend recently that with summer turning into fall, obon season is almost at its end. Obon is one of my favorite times of the year and I’m quite devastated that COVID-19 didn’t allow any of our usual celebrations (and food!) go on this year.

Even though we cannot dance this year, this is an important time to remember our ancestors and the work and sacrifices that they made so that we can live in the present. I want to do something different with this month’s theme. Rather than talking about the art historical aspects of the shirt print like I have done previously, I want to talk about the history around the shirts: sugar plantation and plantation communities.

Reyn Spooner’s sugar plantation print by Detrich Varez is a good reminder of this. My father’s family grew up in Waipahu and worked at the Hawaii Sugar Plantation Association Experiment Station located where Waipahu High School currently is. My paternal grandparents both passed when I was in high school, but I feel very lucky to have the next best thing which is my grandaunt, Auntie Lorraine. She is every niece and nephew’s favorite auntie. She has a great sense of humor and laughs at herself. We have gotten closer over the years since we both moved back to Aiea and we talk a lot about the olden days and what Waipahu was like.

Auntie Lorraine was the office manager at Arakawa Store located on Old Depot Road in Waipahu. Arakawa Store was a plantation store that opened in 1909 and closed in 1995. Because of its size and the number of products it offered, it was the store for practically the entire ʻEwa district of Oʻahu. Unlike my other family members, I didn’t grow up going to Arakawa Store, but the memory of the store is somewhere in the homes of all my family members and close family friends. I have cups, wallets, jewelry cleaning supplies, furniture; the list of Arakawa Store products goes on.

Auntie was an employee and close friend to the Arakawa family and virtually everyone who shopped at the store during her 45 years of employment there. I sat down with her to talk story about palaka, plantation life, and the store. Every slide includes a question I posed to her and her response. You’ll see quickly that she’s still very, very sharp and one of my favorite people to hang out with. May this interview be a kind reminder to you that if you have kupunā still with you, cherish them and talk with them. You’ll be surprised to hear what they have to say about the past!

Where was the original location of Arakawas?

Arakawa’s was on the other side of Depot Road. There was an alley and you had to walk in the alley. It’s where the parking lot now is for Oʻahu Finance.

You guys were living by Waipahu High School. Would you guys go to Depot Road a lot? How long would it take you guys to get there?

Walk. We walked. Even to go to school we walked. And we were living near the high school. It was a long walk.

What did they sell at Arakawa Store?

It was a small, old-fashioned store and they had everything hanging. They had mostly plantation workers’ raincoats and all that kine stuff for the plantation workers. I don’t know who made that but they used to sell that and everyone used to buy from them. Also fabric. Mrs. Taba used to handle the fabric so she had one section of the store selling materials. I don’t remember them selling any shoes. Then they moved across the street on Depot Road and that’s when they mostly divided the store by clothing, materials, hardware, supplies like that. It was a BIG warehouse.

What was located around Arakawa Store?

They didn’t have too much you know. Had the sporting good store on the corner and then Rocky’s. George Dean Photography was next to Rocky’s. They had a barber shop; a Filipino man was running a barber shop. The bank in the Arakawa’s parking lot came later. There is also a saimin stand behind the Rocky’s building. It’s a little store but they make good potato tempura. So even if you pre-order, you still have to wait in line because it is a little, small space and they sell saimin if you want to eat. Everybody waiting in line but there’s only two small tables but some people used to sit down and eat.

What colors did palaka come in before?

Navy blue and white. It was a heavy cotton. It was more for long sleeve shirts with a collar. In those days it wasn’t that expensive. They would wear khaki pants. They had a hat but some of them would put a scarf, like a square material, so that would keep the sun from hitting your neck. [My dad] wore that practically everyday when he was out in the field. After that palaka died down, and slowly it came back in fashion. The different colors came way after the new store was built. Before it was just the navy, and then after that the red came in. You could buy the finished shirts and the yardage.

When did you start working at Arakawas?

I was working part-time when I was going to school and you know would work during Christmas like that. And then after I graduated, I wanted to work. So she asked me if you want to work for us. So I said “Yah, I want to work.” So I went into work but at that same time, they said they needed someone to help with office work too. So that’s how I got into the office.

At Arakawa’s did you have a uniform?

At one time, we all had the same print aloha shirt. We always wore pants with an aloha shirt. It’s been so long I forgot haha.

No. 005 - Cooke Street, Canoe diagrams

THE SPECS
Brand: Cooke Street
Print: Canoe diagrams

THE MATERIAL
The shirt I featured in the first post (No. 001) was a 55% polyester-45% cotton blend and I compared it to a chambray type feel. This is shirt is probably a higher percentage of cotton than No. 001. It wrinkles and feels extremely light.

THE DESIGN

Intricate canoe diagrams as art became a sensation in the late 1970s, largely thanks to Hawaiian historian, artist, and sailor Herbert Kawainui Kāne. While I am not sure who designed this shirt or when, I’m fairly confident that the shirt was made in the 1980s. I want to talk about Kāne’s artform and research process in conversation with another excellent source for the study of waʻa of Hawai'i and of the Pacific which Kāne consulted while developing his most famous design, Hōkūleʻa.

Canoes of Oceania

Unlike many of his anthropology colleagues, English ethnographer James Hornell argued that Pacific Islanders were intelligent seafarers who voyaged, migrated, and settled the archipelagos of Oceania both near and far. Hornell took a particular interest in voyaging knowledge which he observed was not as prevalent in the Pacific by the early twentieth-century, “Another subject that received special attention concerned the extent and character of the knowledge formerly possessed by the South Sea peoples of the art and practice of navigation. Their skill as deep-sea sailors has usually been greatly underestimated, particularly by the early circumnavigators whose labors might well have been more fruitful and successful had they appreciated at its full worth the comparatively extensive knowledge of the seaways of the Pacific possessed by certain Pacific islanders.”

Realizing that artists aboard the nineteenth-century western expeditions of the Pacific seldom took detailed illustrations of canoe structures, Hornell undertook two major expeditions of the region to study, diagram, and learn about Pacific canoe construction. He described his research aims as such, “The foremost aim of my work has been to collect, correlate, and arrange all the known and available details of canoe construction as it is or was characteristic of each island group in order that the student of racial migration may have all the help possible from this source.” In 1924, the St. George Expedition allowed him the opportunity to visit the Marquesas, Tuamotus, and the Society Islands. The year following, Hornell traveled to Samoa, Tonga, and Fiji on his second expedition funded by the Percy Sladen Trust.

Between 1936 and 1938, the Bishop Museum published three volumes by Alfred Cort Haddon, a British ethnologist with research interests also in the Pacific, and Hornell as a part of the Special Publications series (Special Publications 27, 28, 29). Volume One is dedicated to the canoes of Polynesia, Fiji and Micronesia, Volume Two to the canoes of Melanesia, Queensland, and New Guinea. The third volume is a definition of terms used, a general survey of the authors’ findings and conclusions. Each volume includes detailed sketches, diagrams, and historical photos and sketches from the different island groups. The three volumes were published into a single volume for the first time as Canoes of Oceania in 1975. Canoes was reprinted a second time in 1991 and a third time most recently in 2017. Prior to the most recent publication by Bishop Museum Press, Canoes of Oceania, was a highly sought after and expensive book, fetching $600+ a copy.

HERB KAWAINUI KĀNE

As Hornell and A. C. Haddon were writing the manuscript for Canoes of Oceania, Herbert Kawainui Kāne was growing up in the rural American Midwest. Born to a Hawaiian-Chinese father and a Danish-American mother in 1928, Kāne was grew up in the farming community of Marshfield, Wisconsin, about 150 miles west of Green Bay, where his father was an optometrist. However, in interviews about his childhood, Kāne emphasized the impact that visiting his fatherʻs home island of Hawaiʻi had on him. It was in Kona that he had his first sailing experience, “My first sailing experience was as an eight year old. I was living in Hilo, but Dad liked to go to Kona for fishing. I went out with an elderly fisherman one day. After hand-lining his catch, he unrolled the mast and sail and set up the mast and told me to get out on the ʻiako (the boom connecting the canoe hull to the outriggered float). Then he trimmed the sail to the onshore breeze and the canoe took off. It was like being on the back of a bird.” It was also on Hawaiʻi Island that Kāne was exposed to painting. In 1935, Kāne visited a gallery show of D. Howard Hitchcock whose landscapes of the island captured his attention and interest.

Kāne joined the US Navy at 17 and worked with the Chinese Nationalist Army as a meteorologist in Shanghai. Following his return stateside, Kāne enrolled in college through the G.I. Bill. He received degrees from the School of Art Institute at the University of Chicago. After graduating, Kāne used his art skills and worked in advertising design in Chicago, illustrating books and magazines including Playboy and Esquire. He also worked closely with architects, developing an interest in architectural drafting. After ten years working in Chicago, he moved to Honolulu in 1972, working as a design consultant for Administration Inc., a subsidiary of C. Brewer & Co. and later Amfac.

Following his move to Hawaiʻi, Kāne resumed his interest in canoe drawings and noticed that the drawings were inaccurate. He also noted that despite a healthy, local paddling culture, a formative book on Hawaiian canoes had never been published. Kāne delved into research on canoe making and history. He studied the information in Canoes of Oceania, visited museums, and read first hand accounts of Pacific sailing by European explorers. The product of his research was his first major series called “Canoes of Polynesia”. Completed at the end of 1972, the series consisted of 14 oil paintings and 13 architectural drawings of canoes. Kāne drew from his own experience on the sea, voyaging chants, descriptions and sketches of canoes by European voyagers, and discussions with anthropologists Tui Terrance Barrow, Bishop Museum’s Kenneth Emory, and Ben R. Finney to guide is artistic process. The series featured canoes of Hawaii, Marquesas, Tuamotus, New Zealand, Cook Islands, Tahiti, Austral Islands, Samoa, Tonga, and Fiji and were acquired by the Hawaii State Foundation on Culture and the Arts. Kāne received wide acclaim for this work which was on view at the Lt. Governor’s office. His work was was featured in numerous newspaper articles at the time.

The year following, Kāne was approached by Ben R. Finney and asked if he wanted to help build a Hawaiian double-hulled voyaging (waʻa kaulua) canoe. Kāne, Finney, and sailor Charles Tommy Holmes co-founded the Polynesian Voyaging Society in 1973. Over the next three years, Kāne acted as the primary designer and construction supervisor of the Hōkūleʻa, a 60-foot, Hawaiian-style, double-hulled canoe. The initial voyage was planned to launch on April 1, 1976 from Honolulu to Tahiti and back, coinciding in part with the bicentennial celebration of America’s Independence in 1776. Hōkūleʻa’s main purpose was to demonstrate that Hawaiians could complete long-distance voyages without the assistance of navigation instruments, an argument that James Hornell and many Hawaiians consistently argued during the first half of the twentieth-century. Kāne said of voyaging critics, “Some critics hold that the earliest Polynesians were not capable of navigating over such long distances. But weʻll use stars as latitude and compass indicators.” Hōkūleʻa’s first voyage launched from Honolua Bay, Maui on 1 May 1976 with Yapese master navigator Mau Piailug at her helm. After 22 days at sea, Hōkūleʻa arrived in Tahiti, dispelling all previous speculation that Polynesian settlement was intentional and not by chance.

The same year as Hōkūleʻa’s inaugural sail, Kāne published his book, “Voyage”, a story of discovery by valley called Te Henua’enana who settled in Waipiʻo. For this project, Kāne used acrylic paint because it dried quickly and allowed the work to move forward. This was different from large paintings in oil and alkyd resin paint gesso-grounded linen canvas which he enjoyed using because it lengthened the time for painting and allowed for more reflection, deliberation, and time for refinement and detail. The art in the book features a number of sublime seascapes that show the different personalities of the ocean between Kahiki and Hawaiʻi. The book features a number of detailed portraits of the crew’s characters which is different from Kāne’s usual subjects of choice.

James Hornell and A. C. Haddon wrote their manuscript with the belief that Pacific navigating was possible. Their careful and timely research helped paved the path for Herb Kāne who less than 50 years after Canoes of Oceania’s publication, utilized that knowledge to design Hōkūleʻa, a new waʻa kaulua that would be sailed using ʻike kupuna. Hōkūleʻa ushered in what was called the Great Canoe Revival and the Second the Hawaiian Renaissance. Canoes and their symbolism to Pacific peoples continue to inspire art, discovery, and possibility.

For more information:

“4,000-Mile Canoe Journey Planned.” Marshfield News-Herald. 21 August 1974: 32.

“A Voyage to the Past.” The Honolulu Advertiser. 22 February 1976: 29.

“Canoes of Oceania.” (2017). Bishop Museum Press: Honolulu.

“Capitol show: ‘wisemen’ of sea.” (1972). Honolulu Star-Bulletin. 24 December 1972: 35.

“Children’s Exhibit.” Honolulu Star-Bulletin. 20 December 1972: 38.

“County Gets Bicentennial Seed Funds.” Hawaii Tribune-Herald. 4 September 1973: 3.

“Early days of Waipio recalled at reunion of old-timers.” (1968). Honolulu Star-Bulletin. 1 April 1968: 21.

“Hawaii-Tahiti canoe voyage backed.” The Honolulu Advertiser. 22 June 1973: 20.

“Hawaiian artist Herb Kane dies at 82.” (2011). Honolulu Star-Advertiser. 10 March 2011: 11.

“Herb Kane: Artist of Ancient Hawaii.” Honolulu Star-Bulletin. 7 July 2002: 49, 54.

No. 001 - Cooke Street, Merchant advertisement

THE SPECS
Brand: Cooke Street
Print: Merchant advertisement
Material: 55% Polyester, 45% Cotton
Style No. 2904 - Full-button down with grey buttons; single pocket
Made in the USA

THE MATERIAL
I wanted to start off with one of my all time favorite shirts, what I call Cooke Street’s “merchant advertisement” print. I have thrifted this shirt in both the grey and blue color, both of which were in the full-button down style.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Cooke Street had a period of Hawaiian historical prints on a 55% polyester-45% cotton blend shirt. The fabric is truly the best of both worlds; cool and light but does not require ironing, a technological feat for its time! It feels like chambray. My husband takes a large in this style and is comfortable in it, even in summer.

THE DESIGN

Beyond the material, this shirt grabbed my attention because of its use of old newspaper merchant advertisements. I searched in nineteenth-century and twentieth-century Hawaiʻi newspapers for the original advertisements and was able to find them! I want to provide more context about the three businesses featured on this shirt all of which were big names in transportation and sundries around the turn of the century. Many of these businesses have legacies that are still with us today.

WILDER STEAMSHIP CO.

The Wilder Steamship Company was founded in 1872 by Samuel Gardner Wilder, a Massachusetts-born shipping magnate who moved to Hawaiʻi in 1856. In 1857, Wilder married Elizabeth Kinaʻu Judd, the daughter of politician and Kualoa Ranch owner Dr. Gerrit P. Judd. Between 1860 and 1870, Wilder started a number of business ventures, including guano shipping and starting a sugar plantation. In 1871, he became the agent for the government-owned passenger steamship, “Kīlauea”. The year following, he started Wilder & Company and expanded to include inter-island shipping and transportation. Rather than competing with the Inter-Island Steam Navigation Company, Wilder & Company traveled on opposite routes from Inter-Island, serving Molokaʻi, Lānaʻi, Maui, and Hawaiʻi Island ports instead.

This photo of Wilderʻs Steamship Company Honolulu pier was taken around the same time the Wilder S.S. Company published its 1903 advertisement in “The Maui News”. Steamship was still the dominant form of inter-island transportation during this period, as seen in the busyness of the dock. We can imagine goods and foods loaded by stevedores on the Wilder and Co.ʻs steamers, “Claudine”, “Kinau”, and “Helene”. Samuel Wilder did not live long enough to see his business survive into twentieth-century, however. He died in the 1888 and was remembered as a public official under Kings Lunalio and Kalākaua. Wilder & Company merged into Inter-Island Steam Navigation in 1905. In 1929, the company began offering commercial airplane service under the name Inter-Island Airways, the predecessor of Hawaiian Airlines.

Original newspaper advertisement: “Kahului R.R. Co.” The Maui News. 8 Aug 1903: 2.

For more information:

“The Late Hon. S. G. Wilder.” The Hawaiian Gazette. 31 July 1888: 6.

“A Genealogy of the Wilder Family of Hawaii.” (1916). Paradise of the Pacific Press: Honolulu. http://imagesofoldhawaii.com/hana-landing/ https://npgallery.nps.gov/SAFR/AssetDetail/74a8d791-38c2-474c-a485-8c6b142e2b81

KAHULUI RAILROAD CO.

The Kahului Railroad earned the title of first railroad in the Kingdom and the oldest operating railroad company in the Hawaiʻi, surviving from 1879-1966. The initial route connected the Wailuku Sugar Mill with the port at Kahului and overtime proved to be an important mode of transportation for Central Maui. The route included five depot stops: Wailuku, at Mill Street and Lower Main Street, Kahului, Sprecklesville, Paia, and Hāmakuapoko. I thought about writing a lengthy post but instead found this great and well produced video on the Kahului Railroad Company as remembered through oral histories from former locomotive engineers, company employees, and riders. I really enjoyed these stories, especially because I really love trains. (7) If youʻre on Oʻahu and want to experience a plantation-era train experience, check out the Hawaiian Railway Society. The route runs from Ewa Beach until Nānākuli and back. I had so much fun on my ride and want to rent out the a train car for a party… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeIdLs645zw

AFONG & ACHUCK

Chun Afong and Qing Achuck were were Chinese merchants in Hawaiʻi and were active primarily between the years 1865 and 1889. Both businessmen were from Zhongshan and immigrated to Hawaiʻi pre-1850. The duo opened their Honolulu shop in 1865 and sold Chinese imports including clothing, textiles, and furniture. The advertisement featured on the Cooke Street shirt along with this advertisement published in the Hawaiian-language newspaper, Ka Nūpepa Kūʻokoa, shows the business savvy of Afong and Achuck. Although foreigners, they learned Hawaiian and English to advertise because the Kingdom was multilingual. @nupepa_blog provided a translation for this article: New Chinese Clothes—Afong [Afona] and Achuck [Akaka], Chinese merchants of this town, have taken out their new clothes imported by them from their land of birth, with the arrival of a double-masted ship from China. Those who want to go there to make purchases, the doors are open.“

Overtime Afong and Achuck expanded their business to include agriculture. They bought Pepeʻekeo Sugar Plantation in 1874 and organized labor migration from China to support their endeavors. Their work was in collaboration with Hawaiian royalty and aristocrats, who were both their friends and clientele. While still maintaining connections to their homeland, both men became naturalized Kingdom citizens and married and had children with chiefly Hawaiian-women. They were loyal to Kalākauaʻs government, even after the Bayonet Constitution which disenfranchised Chinese citizens living in Hawaiʻi. While Afong and Achuckʻs store is no longer standing, you can still visit a few places associated with the two businessmen. The first lychee tree planted in 1873 at the site of Afongʻs mansion still stands at the Nuʻuanu Shopping Plaza on the corners of Nuʻuanu and School Streets. The lychee tree was transported by Achuck from China and gifted to Afong. Afong also had a Kālia villa at the site of Fort DeRussy.

For more information:

“Merchant Prince of the Sandalwood Mountains: Afong and the Chinese in Hawaii.” (1997). University of Hawaiʻi Press: Honolulu.

“Na Lole Hou o Kina.” Ka Nupepa Kuokoa. 16 October 1869: 3.

“Sojourners and Settlers: Chinese Migrants in Hawaii.” (1908). University of Hawaii Press: Honolulu.

Pālule Makule

My name is @acupofsarahki and I’m a fashion historian with a focus on Hawaiʻi. While my academic research focuses on nineteenth-century fashion economics, I am also interested in the twentieth-century history of the aloha shirt and aloha clothing broadly. I have been collecting vintage aloha clothing and textiles for the past ten years.

I have a particular affinity for men’s aloha shirts and t-shirts. When my grandpa passed, I took a stack of his shirts because he loved their kitschy phrases. My dad is a Reyn Spooner guy and their pullover style, half-button, slim-fit cut has been his uniform for the past 30 years. I was my husband’s vintage aloha shirt dealer for a time before we started dating too. In all three cases, all guys had more preferences about the fit, color, and design of their shirts than most people realized, which made certain shirts their staples. Men have historically had their own opinions about fashion, but we tend to overlook their decision making around clothing.

I have four main goals with this project.

1. To catalogue, historicize, and track aloha clothing that has come into my possession. I enjoy gifting and occasionally selling vintage clothing that I’ve collected so capturing them while they’re with me would be a nice thing to start doing. People shop for vintage for different reasons, but I tend to buy shirts for their historical qualities. I’ll try to explain why I thought it was worth collecting and what makes it interesting. Was it the design? Was it the material? The cut?

2. To showcase the diversity of designs and textiles that were designed and sold by Oceania-based aloha clothing companies. Companies based in Hawaiʻi account for the majority of brands I’ve collected but aloha clothing was also a phenomenon in the islands south of Hawaiʻi, and later along the Pacific Rim.

3. To talk with people about their love of aloha clothing. I’m interested in who makers imagine they design for, their design process, and struggles and successes in clothing manufacturing. For collectors and proud wearers of aloha clothing, I want to know what their favorites are and how they continue the aloha clothing tradition in the contemporary.

4. To reach a different audience with my research and learn new skills along the way. The biggest struggle for historians is finding relevance outside the academy. We have a thriving aloha clothing culture and here, I want to connect the trends we love now with the past (and with primary source references).

In NO WAY am I the authority on aloha shirt or aloha clothing. There are people who have published books on this same topic (see Hope, Dale. “Patagonia The Aloha Shirt: Spirit of the Hawaiian Islands.” (2016). I want this to be a forum where people can also discuss, correct me, and bring in other sources of knowledge about the things I feature. I hope to post here and on Instagram as frequently as I can, but please bear with me. I’m a Taurus who hasn’t used Illustrator in seven years. I want things to look nice and be well researched.