Shirt tales - The Aloha Shirt: Spirit of the Islands - Review

Sunset, August, 2001 by Matthew Jaffe

Aloha shirts work a strange magic: Men who otherwise think of casual business dress as a radical fashion statement throw caution to the trade w and happily don shirts purple, red, and fuchsia decorated with flowers, pineapples, erupting volcanoes, and leaping marlins Dale Hope's new book The Aloha Shirt: Spirt of the Islands, celebrate this uniquely Hawaiian contribution to the world of style.

Richly illustrated, the book traces the development of the aloha shirt as a tourist souvenir and as a unique art form with deep roots in Islands culture. While history of fabrics and even buttons is fascinating, the real joy of the book is discovering the origins the shirt that you may stashed in your closet, be it the design that Elvis Presly wore on the movie poster of Blue Hawaii that little number with the flying fish that you picked up on Catalina a few years back. Beyond Words Publishing, Hillsboro,