Aloha shirt

The print

The shirt was owned Douglas Pooloa Tolentino, a Hawaiian artist, musician and genealogist based in Honolulu. He designed the print for the aloha shirt label Cooke Street.

The shirt features a highly dynamic print of Hawaiian men, dressed in a malo (loin cloth), surfing, casting fishing nets and paddling wa'a (canoes). Douglas carved a wood block for each scenario, and worked with a designer at Cooke Street to create a cohesive, repetitive print.

A conversation piece

Douglas Tolentino wore the shirt when he was performing at Hawai'i's famous Moana Surfrider Hotel in the late 1990s. The hotel opened in 1901, and was the first to be built onWaikiki Beach.

When he worked by the ocean he 'preferred to wear ocean themed shirts'. This shirt enabled him to talk about 'what our people used to do', and Hawaiian's intimate relationship with the ocean.

At the Moana Hotel, he strolled as he sang, so his audience could see his shirts up close. The designs often prompted conversations with the hotel's guests, and gave the singer the opportunity to talk about Hawaiian culture.

The Cooke Street label

The print was commissioned from Douglas Tolentino by Mort Feldman (1921-2004) who also owned the Tori Richard's clothing brand. The company's headquarters was based in the rennovated Primo Brewry in Cooke Street, Honolulu for some years. Feldmen commissioned a number of artists to produce prints for the Cooke Street brand, and acknowledged them on the swing tags.

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. This shirt was selected for Te Papa by Doug Tolentino.

Te Papa’s co-collecting programmes are guided by the principle of mana taonga – the sharing authority with stakeholder communities.