Desmond's of Southern California by Kahala shirt

Ok, I scored my first vintage silkie yesterday. I went to a 2nd hand shop and hit the racks. The second or third shirt I checked had a telltale vintage label:

Desmond's of Southern California

by Kahala

All Silk

M

Since I was still in the store, I had to suppress my shout of joy until I paid for my purchase and left. I did take a look at the shirt before buying it and noticed there were some condition issues in that the fabric was separating in the right armpit location, but was in otherwise in good shape. Four coconut shell buttons, vertical button holes and, at first, it didn't appear to have a collar loop.

The vertical blue strips to the left and right of the button line looks sort of like palm tree trunks.

When I got this beauty home I took a closer look. The fabric separation was occurring in two areas under the right sleeve. The separation is very close to the seam where the sleeve attaches to the body of the shirt, but it isn't on the seam itself. The separations are in a place that normal hanging on a hanger doesn't put any undo strain on them. One good thing is that the separations are not visible when the shirt is being worn. This could be sewn up without being seen, but I am not going to do anything at the moment.

The print is stylized and somewhat abstract. So there is nothing obviously Hawaiian about it at first - no palm trees, no fish, no waves, etc. But after looking at the shirt a bit more, I see what might be elements of tropical design. Palm trunks and palm fronds? The color palette consists of red, blue, black, white, and grey. Pretty conservative compared to the strong colors of shirts from the 1960s.

Upon closer examination, I found a button for a collar loop. When I first looked at the shirt in the store, I didn't see a collar loop. But after a bit of searching I found the loop. In the other Hawaiian shirts I own, the loops are prominent and made out of fabric. On this shirt, the loop was made out of reinforced thread and it lay flat. So it almost looked like a bit of stiching and was nearly invisible. Is this typical of older shirts? 

The collar loop is nearly invisible.

The label is, of course, the biggest source of information about the shirt. Desmond's of Southern California was a clothing retailer in the Los Angeles area that was founded in 1862 and operated until being sold in 1981. At one point Desmond's had 19 locations throughout California. 

Desmond's of Southern California existed from 1862 to 1981.

 I checked several reference books and found a few different designs of labels for Desmond's. One version has an outrigger and another has a palm tree. The label on my shirt has text and a wave pattern. I checked Hana Shirt Company and they have a couple of shirts from Desmond's, one shirt dated 1950s had the outrigger. But they also have a NFS rayon shirt with a label that appears to be similar to mine, and this was dated 1940s. 

The "All Silk" label is in script font.

 The shirt also has a second label that reads "All Silk". This term is a bit unusual in that modern clothing seems to use percentages, e.g. "100% silk" or some such thing. The label also has a size, "M". I recall but can't find an article about when letter sizing was introduced to clothing. IIRC clothing up to the 1950s used a ML (Medium/Large) size. 

The shirt itself was manufactured by the well known Kahala brand. Kahala made a lot of shirts for retailers and a common style of label on vintage Hawaiian shirts reads "Made for <Name of Retailer> by <Name of Manufacturer>".

Based on the information I've gathered on this shirt, I would date it to the late 1940s or, at the latest, the very early 1950s.

Waikiki 76 Hawaiian Shirt

I came across this green shirt with interesting designs, including tikis. While I liked the design, I didn't buy it because of the material and where it was manufactured.

The shirt has a label from Waikiki 76. It is 100% crepe polyester and was made in Korea. It has four large, wooden buttons with vertical button holes. No collar loop and a semi-matching pocket.

An online search of "Waikiki 76" brings up a few shirts on Ebay and Etsy, all of which are made from polyester. Interestingly, the other shirts have a rectangular label, but the one I found has a trapezoidal shaped one.

A search of the RN shows Waikiki 76's parent company was Dongwha USA Enterprise Co., located at 900 Wilshire Blvd in Los Angeles. I couldn't find much more about this company; the name Dongwha is used in several Korean companies, and there is no clear connection between the manufacturer of the shirt and these other companies. And there is no apparent connection to Hawaii.

Kimi's Hawaiian Shirt

I recently picked up this Hawaiian shirt made by Kimi's. There was an additional label beneath the manufacturer's label that is now gone. The shirt appears to be 100% cotton with four bronze colored asian metal buttons, vertical button holes, and collar loop. Oh, and it is really, really pink. Ok, maybe salmon.

Kimi's shirt in its wrinkled, freshly discovered glory.

I haven't been able to find much on Kimi's. I checked for label examples in several reference books, but nothing turned up. My guess is that Kimi's is one of those small brands that never got a whole lot of visibility. It is important to know that Kimi is a fairly common name for Asian women in Hawaii. It might be derived from Kimiko.

An Etsy search turned up a couple of dresses with a different designed Kimi's label. This one says "Kimi's at Kings Alley, Waikiki, Sandwich Islands". So this gives us clues to help garner some information. Lets break this down a bit to see what information we can extract.

Kimi's label from dress found on Etsy.

King's Alley (now called King's Village) is a shopping center located at the corner of Kaiulani Avenue and Koa Avenue. The center was completed in 1972 according to the Honolulu Star Bulletin. So if the Kimi's label in the shirt is the same business as that on the dress, then we can surmise that Kimi's was around at least since the early 1970s. 

But a closer look at the Kimi's label in the shirt I picked up suggests that it is older than the one in the dress. The shirt label is white with black palm trees and a stylized font, very typical of 1960s and earlier design. The Etsy dress has an older-fashioned style font, similar to that found in the late 1800s. King's Alley was themed to represent Hawaii in the late 1890s and the font from the dress label seems to coincide with the theme.

Kimi's label. 1960s version?

 A search of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin archives has a 1999 article that mentions a clothing store at the Maunakea Marketplace called Kimi's that was still in business. However, there is no indication this store sold branded clothing under their name, and I suspect it has nothing to do with the Kimi's branded clothing.

So what I surmise from the available evidence is that Kimi's had a retail store in King's Alley at least in the 1970s. But the different style label of my shirt suggests that Kimi's was around before that time. I speculate that the shirt is an earlier Kimi's product (and likely from a different location). Based on the construction, cut, and patina, I'm guessing early to mid-1960s. 

One final note, I hand-washed the shirt in cold water (like I do with all of my shirts). This shirt bled a bit, leading a friend to speculate whether this shirt was originally white in color. If you note, the shirt has vertical stripes of different shades of pink (ok, salmon). Is it possible this shirt was originally white and red, and that the dye bled and tinted the white? A men's shirt this pink (salmon!) seems a bit unusual. But the coloration seems pretty even, so I'm guessing the answer is no, it wasn't originally white.