item details
Overview
Kealopiko
Kealopiko is a clothing company based on the island of Moloka'i in Hawai'i. The company was founded by three friends, Ane Bakutis, Jamie Makasobe and Hina Kneubuhl in 2006, with the aim of breaking the 'traditional mold of how Hawai'i has been portrayed for so long'.
'We felt that what is truly and uniquely Hawaiian deserved to be the focus of designs transferred to clothing: our plants and animals, our language and practices, our ali'i (royalty) and kapuna (elders and ancestors), and our mo'olelo (stories and history) as the people of Hawai'i. We also had the audacious assumption that people were hungry for this kind of fashion.'
A basket that satisfies
This hand screen-printed aloha shirt celebrates the material culture of traditional fishing practices. It features a hīna`i (fishtrap), an object that was often made by women, along with the proverb, 'Ka ʻie lawe e lawa ai ka makemake - The basket that satisfies one's desires (provides what one needs).' This design was drawn by Ane from a hīna`i held at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu.
Locally produced
Kealopiko dye and hand-screen print their woven fabrics with non-toxic dyes at their home base on Moloka'i, while their knits are printed and assembled in Los Angeles.
Co-collecting in Hawai‘i
This shirt was acquired by Te Papa during a co-collecting trip to Hawai‘i in 2017. Te Papa worked with Noelle Kahanu,a cultural specialist from the University of Hawai‘i, to develop collection of aloha shirts that reflects the ways in which Hawaiian culture has been historically represented, and misrepresented, through the aloha shirt, and the ways in which contemporary native Hawaiian designers are utilising the aloha shirt to communicate indigenous cultural values.
Te Papa’s co-collecting programmes are guided by the principle of mana taonga – the sharing authority with stakeholder communities.