Post #47323 by bigbrotiki on Mon, Aug 11, 2003 11:52 AM

You know where I got that Primo shirt? At the coolest place for shirts in Honululu:
At SEARS (in the Ala Moana mall).

They have reprinted it in ALL the colors (and sizes), even the curry colored one. I saw it there four years ago and passed because I had gotten so much other stuff, so I was glad to still find it being manufactured.

ALSO they still had those great "Iolani Executive" baby blue and white (or caramel) lounge shirts with the lace inserts (100% Polyester!), and the three quarter sleeve shirts from "BeauTiki", exact replicas of the originals.

Otherwise I was quite dissapointed with the development of Aloha shirt culture in Waikiki.
Granted, there are a few stores that have those vintage silk shirt reprints, with beautiful classic patterns, but for my taste they are too "nostalgic", 40s and early 50s style. I like the more modern abstract 60s and even 70s patterns, preferrably with Tikis.
But there were no Tiki shirts found to be anywhere (xept one or two bad noveaux Tiki mug mixed shirts), just tons and tons of generic mediocre prints in the tourist stores, while the "hipper" stores/labels like Quicksilver and LocalMotion (who a while ago came up with a cool design here and there) had gone the muted palette route, a la Tommy Bahama (Yuck), with these monochrome grey/navy green colors, which to me is NOT what an Aloha shirt should be like, it has to be loud and saturated in color.

And there seems to be a loss of knowledge of cutural sources with the pattern designers, very little, and if so, bad, interpretations of the old Tapa and other Polynesian patterns, as if no one knows to look at Oceanic Art books anymore...