item details
Overview
A Duke Kahanamoku shirt
This aloha shirt was manufactured by Catalina, a Californian company famous for its beach and leisure wear. The shirt, however, boasts the Duke Kahanamoku brand.
Duke Paoa Kahanamoku (1890-1968) was a champion Hawaiian surfer and record breaking swimmer. An Olympic gold medallist, Duke Kahanamoku is also internationally renowned for popularising the ancient Hawaiian sport of surfing. He even visited New Zealand in 1915 on a surfing tour, where he was nick-named 'the Honolulu Maori'.
From the late 1930s onwards, Duke Kahanamoku endorsed a range of different aloha wear brands, including Brandfleet, Cisco Casuals, Catalina and Kahala Sportswear. In 1959, he became an official 'Ambassador of Aloha'.
Historic Hawaiian Material Culture
This aloha shirt features what is known as a 'hash pattern' of 18th century scenes that highlight historic Hawaiian material culture and bark cloth patterns.
Co-collecting in Hawai'i
This shirt was acquired by Te Papa during a co-collecting trip to Hawai'i in 2017 based around the aloha shirt, and associated designs. Te Papa worked with Noelle Kahanu, a cultural specialist from the University of Hawai‘i, to develop collection 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.