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The most colorful and complete book published on the most enduring souvenir ever invented: the Hawaiian shirt.
Beautifully illustrated with hundreds of images, this book recounts the colorful stories behind these marvelous shirts: as cultural icons, evocative of the mystery and the allure of the islands, capturing the vibe of the watermen culture and lifestyle — casual, relaxed, and fun. Valued by professional collectors and by millions of vacationers and fashionistos, these shirts are enjoying a fashion revival.
Drawing from hundreds of interviews, newspaper and magazine archives, and personal memorabilia, the author evokes the world of the designers, seamstresses, manufacturers, and retailers who created the industry and nurtured it from its single-sewing-machine-shop beginnings to an enterprise of international scope and importance and its revival today.
The Aloha Shirt is both a dazzling, fun-to-browse art book, and a fascinating chronicle of the world’s love affair with Hawaii.
Cultural icon and bon vivant Homer Simpson has opined that the only people who wear Hawaiian shirts are gay guys and big, fat party animals. Hope and Tozian put the lie to Homer in a lush, loving look at aloha shirts and the industry that provides them. Part fashion history, part cultural exploration, the marvelously well-illustrated tome examines the rise of Hawaii's image as a tourist's paradise, a perception engineered by far-sighted folks intent on making a buck. After reviewing competing claims as to who "invented" the aloha shirt, Hope and Tozian delve into the manufacturers that made it a perdurable icon of carefree relaxation. Amidst all the knockout threads on display, they sprinkle color pictures of vintage labels and the coconut buttons the authentic shirts sported. Languidly informative and pretty as a hula dancer, this is a book to please anyone interested in Hawaiian tourism and culture, in fashion, or in big, gorgeous picture books. Booklist
"The Aloha Shirt" is a work of art. -- Surfertoday.com
"Don’t judge a book by its cover. Unless that cover looks like this book’s cover." --Urbandaddy.com
Dale Hope's timely opus may well be the definitive book on the aloha shirt...It is a delightful and informative read... -- Punahou Bulletin Fall
Hope has blended his love of Hawaii and knowledge of textiles into a coffee-table book that appeals to anyone who's ever worn a Hawaiian shirt. -- Santa Cruz Sentinel
If you think of Hawaiian shirts as gaudy garb for a luau, take a peek at author Dale Hope's gorgeous new book. -- Willamette Week
Prior efforts include The Hawaiian Shirt by Tommy Steele, and now Dale's The Aloha Shirt takes it further to become the final and complete word on the topic. -- Surfer's Journal
"There are pages and pages of close-ups of vintage Hawaiian shirts, and it's fun to study the details, but it's the history of Hawaii alongside this theme that makes this book a deep dive and an escape read at the same time." -- Mother Nature Network
Silver Award Winner, 2017 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Awards, Coffee Table Book and Cover Design
Silver, 2016 Foreword Indies Awards, Regional Bronze, 2016 Foreword Indies Awards, Pop Culture