Hawaii's 'Aloha shirts' have Japanese roots

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I wish they’d take off in the continental US. I have one “almost Hawaiian” shirt that I wear to work sometimes, but it’d be nice to see some color and patterns and beauty in clothing.

Ahem!

Aloha shirts - or at least their popularization - are usually credited to Ellery Chun, who according to his NYT obituary began selling them in small batches at his family dry-goods store in Honolulu, and then began mass-producing them in 1933, 4 years before the Japanese store mentioned in the above link started selling them. Credit to the Chinese-Americans and Hawaiians, please.

Now if the Japanese want to take credit for being the first to make them out of really top-grade printed silk, then in the absence of evidence to the contrary, sure I’ll give them that.

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I find myself wondering why they are not called konnichiwa shirts, if they’re so damn Japanese?

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