Here at Tiki Collective we are alllll about continuing the age old tradition of Aloha Friday. We were really excited to crack in to our new book, The Aloha Shirt: Spirit Of The Islands, By Dale Hope. A must have book for any Tiki connoisseur. It not only takes you behind the art, design, marketing, of the popular shirts, but also the spirit that the Aloha shirt has brought to American culture.

Scroll through!

What we and most people love about Aloha shirts other than the prints, is the style and construction, which we found out was originally modeled after workwear! We don’t want to spoil it for you, but here is a short blurb from the book’s introduction:

“Hawaiian print or aloha shirts have been a long tradition in Hawai’i. They were a result of several different influences. The cut and style took after the sturdy garment worn by sugar cane and pineapple plantation workers: a traditional shirt-sleeve, button-front work shirt of blue-and-white-checkered denim called palaka. The colorful prints came from the earliest shirts being designed for visitors to the islands to take home more than just some memories of their trip to Hawai’i”.

The first Aloha shirts appeared around 1935 and grew in popularity up until the 50s as tourism started to grow. Later becoming the dress code for business people in Hawai’i. They came back in to fashion here and there, and lucky for us, we are on the crest of their revival.

Which brings us to our Pataloha® shirts. These are probably some of the best prints we’ve seen in a while. If you’ve spotted us at any of the Tiki events over the summer, we were probably sporting these. Although our particular shirts are from the previous collection, they still have a lot of great prints on sale now.

Ruben’s is a classic leaf print with a modern color pallet and the Kane’s has illustrations of sea/fishing life. They are probably our go to because the quality of the material is really nice and of course the colors are very on brand!

What do you guys think? It’s been a while since we got these, so we’re gonna have to head back to the Patagonia outlet in Santa Cruz to see what else they’ve got on sale before the warm weather is over!