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Casual short-sleeve print shirt, originally made in Hawaii; a colorful fashion item that over the decades bounced all over the fashion spectrum, from casually elegant, to tacky and garish, to highly collectible.

Native Hawaiians for years had been hand-painting island motifs onto the drab tapa-bark 

 shirts favored by Chinese immigrant workers, when, in 1931, Honolulu tailor Ellery Chun began putting the same brightly colored pattern onto silk. Five years later, Kamehameha Garment Company in Honolulu brought the newly named "aloha shirt" to mass market for the first time, and it instantly became a must-have fashion accoutrement for mainland American tourists who were pouring into Hawaii by the tens of thousands. Popular prints included hula dancers, palm trees, surfers, flowers, pineapples, tiki heads, tropical fish, leis, and ukuleles.

Montgomery Clift, Bing Crosby, Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra were among the celebrities who helped popularize the aloha shirt; President Harry Truman wore one in a photo used on a 1951 

 magazine cover; surfer and Olympic swimming champion Duke Kahanamoku virtually lived in aloha shirts from the '30s until his death in 1968. Silk and rayon were the favorite materials in the early decades of the aloha shirt, followed by cotton. California surfers visiting Hawaii just before and after World War II, meanwhile, were enthusiastic about exporting native culture back to the mainland, and loaded their steamer trunks with aloha shirts, along with ukuleles, palm-frond hats, and tiki torches.

Aloha shirt quality began to decline in the mid-'50s as polyester knockoffs were stacked high in department stores like Sears and Roebuck; through the '60s and early '70s the aloha shirt was so associated with tourists and waiters in Polynesian-theme restaurants that owners of genuine "silkies" purged the items en masse from their wardrobes as hopelessly out of fashion. By the late 70s, however, vintage aloha shirts, purchased at thrift shops or flea markets, were not only back in fashion as retro-chic, but were starting to be collected and traded. Prices went up dramatically in the '80s and '90s. Aloha shirt specialty shops were founded, books were written on the subject, and by 2000 it was possible to spend more than $5,000 on a well-preserved rayon or silk. "Condition, rarity, coconut buttons, print, and fabrication are all factors to be considered when assessing a shirt," authority Dale Hope wrote in the 

 in 2000, noting that most aloha shirt collectors keep their shirts in use. "Aficionados of the rayon silkies say that there is no better feeling than that cool, smooth fabric against the skin."

Hawaii governor Ben Cayean declared 2000 as "The Year of the Aloha Shirt," in honor of originator Ellery Chun, who had just died at age 91. Books on the aloha shirt include 

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

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Encyclopedia of Surfing

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