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Overview
Salvage Public
Salvage Public was founded in 2013 by Joseph Serrao, Noah Serrao and Napali Souza, who aim to 'make clothes that reflect a Hawaiian way of living: Close to the natural world, at the crossroads of culture' for a global market. They produce high end surf and street wear, including t-shirts, dress shirts and jeans. Nostalgia is part of their brand.
‘We’re a bunch of millennials so we look to the ‘80s and the ‘90s and we remix the culture that we grew up with which was music, surfing and hip hop and all of that. We figure out a way to plug Hawaii into that, so aloha shirts are a part of that story.’ Napali Souza, 2017
A retro look
It was Salvage Public's love of nostalgia that drew them to using this commerically produced fabric for this pair of sample trousers. The weight, texture and design of the fabric is reminiscent of furnishing fabrics from the 1960s featuring pan-Pacific prints, which mimicked tapa cloth and batik.
Salvage Public designed a full ensemble in this print. It included a longsleeved shirt, fitted trousers, cap and a navy blue hoodie lined with the print. They never went into production with the trousers.
Co-collecting in Hawai'i
This pair of trousers 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. These trousers were purchased from Salvage Public's store in Honolulu.
Te Papa’s co-collecting programmes are guided by the principle of mana taonga – the sharing authority with stakeholder communities.