Auction Ends: Aug 9, 2010 02:00 PM HST

Clothing

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Large Men's Navy Blue Palaka Aloha Shirt

Item Number: 129

Estimated Value: 80 USD
Buy Now Price: 80 USD
Quantity Available: 0
Sold: 1 – Purchase History

Item Description

A hand-crafted navy blue, men's, palaka shirt. It has long sleeves and is finished with coconut buttons. Made here on the Big Island, this shirt is the perfect attire for a pa'ina up mauka.

The History of Palaka: In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Hawai’ian Islands emerged as a powerful plantation economy and workers needed a rugged shirt that was suitable for hard labor in the fields. A cargo load of durable cotton shirts with bottom tails, long sleeves and a simple plaid cross checkered print pattern, brought in from an American trading vessel, found its way into the hands of the field laborers who quickly altered the shirts to be more comfortable. They opened up the collar, cut the shirt tails off to a straight bottom and even cut the long sleeves short. The end result was a very comfortable, non-restricting, loose fitting shirt that helped them stay a little cooler while working hard under the hot Hawai’ian sun. This shirt became known as the palaka shirt, and within a generation, the checkered blue and white denim palaka became the standard work shirt of Hawai’i. By the early 1930s the palaka Hawai’ian shirts and blue denim trousers called sailor-mokus had almost become the official national costume of Hawai’i both on and off the plantation and its design lead to the creation of the Hawai’ian shirt.