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| Passion Investments: Textiles |
Aloha Dreams
Richard John Pietschmann
08/01/2005
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Drew Dolben prefers to display his collection of Hawaiian aloha shirts on his
back, not in a gallery. He knows this may diminish their value, but like many
aloha aficionados, he finds wearing them is more than half the fun. “If I want
to wear a Duke (Kahanamoku) with a sailfish or marlin print, I’ve got one in
white, one in black and one in blue,” the Boston-based real estate developer
enthuses. “If I want a savage-print shirt, I can choose a Surfriders, a
Kamehameha or a Pali.”
 | | ALOHA SHIRTS capture the dream of escaping to paradise. The Royal
Hawaiian shirt features tandem surfers gliding toward Waikiki Beach as four
wahine ride in a wood canoe. (Photograph by Ric Noyle; Dale Hope Collection.) |
Dolben began seriously collecting vintage Hawaiian
shirts of the 1930s through the 1950s about five years ago after his wife gave
him H. Thomas Steele’s book, The Hawaiian Shirt, which detailed their history
and value. He now owns several hundred alohas, a wardrobe worth hundreds of
thousands of dollars. His most prized alohas are worth several thousand dollars
each. These are the rare and valuable “silkies” made from very fine rayon,
produced until the mid-1950s. At that point manufacturers turned to cheaper
rayon and other materials, providing a clear temporal demarcation line for
collectors. “I’ve never collected anything but the silkies,” Dolben explains.
Collectors seek silkies with a winning combination of pattern, color, label,
condition and size. Large and extra-large shirts are particularly scarce,
because these are the sizes sought by many contemporary buyers who, like Dolben,
buy the alohas to wear. That sliver of the market niche is the one most heavily
influenced by celebrities, sports figures and other casual collectors who will
pay almost any price for the right look.
Actor Nicolas Cage, for example,
recently visited Bailey’s Antiques and Aloha Shirts, the Honolulu haberdashery
that has offered vintage shirts since 1980, looking for an extra large with a
particular purple pattern. Proprietor David Bailey pulled one from his personal
collection and sold it to the actor for $4,000. Not long ago, he sold a 1950 Art
Vogue label aloha with a hula girl back panel to singer Jimmy Buffett for
$5,500, his highest price to date. Bailey has heard rumors that a Japanese sumo
wrestler paid $8,000 for a “dead stock” (never sold) XXXL aloha.
Eternal Sunshine
Prime shirts that
sold for no more
than $25 to $35 in
the late 1970s and
then roared to $800 to $1,000 a
decade later now
command prices
three and four times greater. |
For serious collectors, aloha shirts’ appeal derives from
a visual impact bordering on textile art. Back-panel shirts with exceptional
scenes, border shirts with vertical and sometimes horizontal panels, and shirts
with black backgrounds that make the colors jump out are especially sought
after. Not surprisingly, one of the most significant longtime Hawaiian shirt
collectors is an art professor. “My wife and I looked at the shirts as prints of
unlimited editions,” says Jack Ford, who teaches art printmaking at California
College of the Arts in Oakland. “They’re just incredibly beautiful, and some of
them are eye-dazzlers.”
 | | THE DETAIL of a Hale Hawaii shirt is set against Oahu’s famed Diamond Head. (Photograph by Ric Noyle; Randy Hild Collection.) |
The couple’s goal, Ford says, was to acquire one
shirt of every pattern. Today their collection of vintage alohas numbers
approximately 1,000. “You know that Here to Eternity shirt that Montgomery Clift
wore in the movie that’s in all the books? I have that one in five or six
different colors,” Ford gushes.
Collecting rare antique Hawaiian shirts has
evolved from the thrift shop, forgotten-trunk-in-the-attic phenomenon of the
1960s and 1970s into a pursuit on par with many refined collectibles. It has
captured the fancy of collectors as wily as the sultan of Brunei.
Ron
Kleyweg, whose Animal House in Venice, Calif., is one of the few vintage
clothing stores left in the Los Angeles area—once a treasure trove of retail
outlets selling old Hawaiian shirts—is one of the longest-standing aloha shirt
dealers, in business for 32 years. Kleyweg explains that prime shirts that sold
for no more than $25 to $35 in the late 1970s and then roared to $800 to $1,000
a decade later command prices three and four times that today. He expects the
next surge in prices to come in the near future. “Prices are going to keep going
up,” he says. “There will be $10,000 shirts.” Despite these upticks, assembling
an important collection of aloha shirts today is still a relatively low-capital
proposition. “For less than a million dollars you can still become a major
player in this market,” Bailey notes.
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