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.

Alfred Shaheen Exhibit Gallery Guide

I ordered a copy of the gallery guide for the Alfred Shaheen exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, which ran in 2010. Unfortunately the guide does not have photos of the exhibit items, but there are text descriptions of the items that include dates and fabrics. 

This guide should be a great help in dating fabrics. Many of the reference books I've seen seem rather subjective on the topic of dating. Since this is guide is for a museum exhibit, I'll consider it authoritatively vetted over other references. :)

You can order a copy from the museum's online store

Cotton vs. Polyester

I suppose polyester is the pariah of fabrics. This synthetic may never get away from its image of 1970s double-knit, leisure suit fashion. But polyester has a place in the history of Aloha shirts, whether we like it or not. Starting in at least the 1970s, clothing designers began to use either 100% polyester or a polyester blend in some of their fabrics. It seems the pure polyester fabrics were more prevalent in the 70s, as what I encounter for later-era shirts are mostly poly/cotton blends.

I suspect most purists will reject any shirt as vintage if it has any polyester in it. So if you are trying to create some criteria of what "vintage" means, then it may be fair to say any shirt with this synthetic fabric is excluded from this coveted criteria. But do note that rayon, while completely accepted as a vintage fabric, is also a synthetic.

So what if you encounter a shirt without a fabric label that might be polyester? Is there a definitive test? I had such an encounter with this shirt.

I found this shirt at a thrift store. I suspected it was at least part polyester, but there were some attributes to it that had me think it might be from the 1960s. The label was missing, but it appeared to be a full-sewn in one, that is indicative of a vintage shirt. The metal buttons also had a vintage patina to them.

The fabric of the shirt was very light weight. All of the 1970s polyester shirts I've seen tended to be heavier weight. The weight of the fabric felt like a woman's summer scarf - very light and airy. Upon closer inspection, there seemed to be surface imperfections to the fabric, which are indicative this was not polyester. The shirt, while soft, didn't didn't seem to have a richness that you find in silk or rayon. But the shirt appeared to have been starched, which might account for the coarseness.

The fabric had a wavy look that suggested this might be imperfections.

My rule is if I have doubts on the vintage of a shirt, then pass on it. But I was intrigued by this shirt for some reason although I had my doubts. There were a few other clues as well. I tightly squeezed the fabric to see if it would hold wrinkles. Silk and rayon will hold wrinkles while polyesters won't (or so I've been told). Sure enough it did hold some wrinkles, but not a lot. So this test was inconclusive.

So I opted to pony up the four dollars and get it and find out more about this item. After bringing it home, I hand-washed the shirt to see of the coarseness (that I attributed to a possible starching) would go away. No dice. Upon further inspection of the loose threads on the inside seam, I saw some unraveling that looked more like fuzziness than stringiness. Ok, this really suggested polyester. But there was one definite test left.

I snipped off some loose threads from the seams and but them in a fireproof container (in this case, the bottom of an empty soda can). I then applied a flame in the definitive "fire test". If a fabric is silk, then it will burn to ashes and smell like burning hair. But if the fabric is polyester, then it will melt and smell like burning plastic.

The flame test.

I think my sample was too small to detect a smell, but the thread burned down to a tiny ball of hardened plastic. This was definitely polyester. In retrospect, the fuzziness of the unraveled fabric was likely a solid clue that the shirt was indeed polyester. So a lesson learned as to the value of carefully examining the seams.

The Aloha Shirt book

As it turned out, I already had Dale Hope's book The Aloha Shirt sitting on my bookshelf when I started collecting vintage Aloha shirts. I don't recall when I bought it or how long it sat there collecting dust. But this book turned out to be a great reference to learn about the history and evolution of Hawaiian shirts.

The bulk of the book is to relate the chronology of Aloha shirts, from its roots in early Polynesian culture to the present day. Hope discusses the somewhat murky origins of the shirts, going from the palaka, to the early tailors in Chinatown that were the source of the first recognizable Aloha shirts. He goes on to discuss the evolution of the shirts from a largely island phenomena to an internationally recognized fashion style.

For the collector, there are numerous photos of vintage shirts from the early days, some labels, and perhaps in some sort of meta-reference, a discussion of collectors. If you are looking for a reference book on collecting shirts, this probably won't be for you. But I do think this book is a must for anybody interested learning about the history and nature of the Hawaiian shirt. Highly recommended to have on your bookshelf.

Liberty House and assorted labels

I made a run today to see what I could unearth. I found a few items from the 1970s but nothing worth picking up. 

My first find was a Tori Richard for Liberty House shirt. Liberty House is one of the venerable vintage Aloha shirt labels, but the were still around at least until the early 1990s. And Liberty House opened Mainland stores in the 1970s, although all were closed by the end of the decade. I checked out this co-branded label and have found a pretty wide range of guesses. One Ebay seller had a shirt with the label and dated it early 1960s, which I think is waaaay off. The Museum of Hawaiian Shirts has a non co-branded version of the label as 1967, and another version (without the trademark symbol and with "Honolulu") as from the 1970s. My guess, based on the label configuration and patina of the shirt, I would agree with the 1970s date.

I found a second co-branded shirt for Liberty House. I couldn't discern the name of the manufacture: Mark Raynton, Mark Rayiton, or Mark Rayrton. I suspect the first, but I couldn't find anything about this guy. The shirt felt like it was 100% polyester, which would date it to the 1970s. The shirt also had four buttons, suggesting it is older than the 1980s. 

The fabric label was missing and I'm a bit wary about trying to discern polyester by touch. I picked up a Lauhala shirt that I first thought was polyester. The fabric had a shine to it and it felt rather slippery to the touch. But the fabric label did say 100% cotton and I suspect it is some kind of high-quality weave. From what I can tell, the polyester of the Liberty House shirt has a lighter weight to it than the cotton Lauhala.

This last shirt is new, but it highlights a potential risk to new collectors. The label has a retro look to it, but this shirt is not only vintage, it wasn't even made in Hawaii. Upon closer look, you can see this shirt was made in Pakistan. Labels can be tricky to master, so beware in relying on just the design of the label.

I wonder if the crescent moon on the label has anything to do with the fact this shirt was made in a Muslim country.