The Hawaiian Shirt: Its Art and History »

In this beautiful little book—illustrated with dozens of shirts—Thomas Steele tells the story of this remarkable art form, details its different varieties, discusses the materials, designers, and manufacturers, and presents the fine points that make a shirt collectible.

Unknown in the Islands until missionaries introduced a drab forerunner to cover "heathen nakedness"—which the irrepressible Hawaiians soon decorated with hand-printed geometric motifs from the traditional tapa cloth—the genuine Hawaiian shirt is now regarded as a work of art and avidly sought out by collectors. When tourism came to Hawaii in the late 1920s, these unusual shirts were among the first things that visitors had to have. Local designers and tailors worked quickly to meet the demand and began to expand the range of decoration to include palm trees and romantic beaches, tropical jungles and volcanoes, exotic flowers and scenes from Polynesian legend. The Hawaiian shirt had been born.

Other Details: 175 full-color illustrations 9 x 9" Published 1984

Prints of Paradise

Hollywood Hawaiian

Patterned Shirts

Shirt Labels

Duke Kahanamoku

Border Shirts

Picture Shirts

The Designers

Women's Clothing

Made in Japan

Hawaiiana

Aloha!

Acknowledgments

Author Biography: H. Thomas Steele runs his own Los Angeles-based graphic design studio specializing in entertainment graphics, illustration, film graphics, and book design. He has designed album covers and advertising for CBS, MCA, Elektra/Asylum, and Warner Brothers records. In the spirit of the true collector, he has shot more than 10,000 color slides cataloging Hawaiian shirts, clothes, and fabric samples from the 1920s to the present. Steele is also the author of the prize-wining Bowl-O-Rama: The Visual Arts of Bowling (Silver Award, Art Directors Annual; AIGA Book Show, et al.), Lick 'Em, Stick 'Em: The Lost Art of Poster Stamps, and co-author (with Jim Heimann and Rod Dyer) of Close Cover Before Striking: The Golden Age of Matchbook Art.