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.