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.