Hawaiian Aloha Shirts inspired by Home Depot

As most of you know Wave Shoppe Hawaiian shirts is a mom and pop Hawaiian clothing manufacturer and retailer. Approximately 40% of the shirts and muumuus you see in our showroom are actually designed in-house. What few people know is how we actually get some of our inspiration.

Inspiration for the designs can come at anytime and often in the most unlikely situations. Lets use one of our most recent designs (pictured), a classic yet simple design containing hibiscus flower, palm and banana leaf.

This beautiful navy blue fabric contains 5 colors, 4 of which are shades of blue and a shade of grey. This was utilized in production of these blue Hawaiian shirts which are available in mens and womens styles as well as dresses.

The purple fabric, also pictured, follows the same convention, 4 shades of purple and a shade of grey. This color is also available as purple Hawaiian shirts in men and womens styles as well as muumuu dresses


Inspiration for this design actually occurred while I was at Home Depot selecting some paint for our family room.

Yes you read that correctly, Home Depot. While I was waiting for some help, I stood in front of the paint strips and was just mesmerized by all of the color combinations and variations of color.

It was almost impossible to resist thinking how cool it would be to have a Hawaiian fabric that was colored in such a way that it actually mimicked the paint samples.

So on a whim, I grabbed bunch of samples of purples and blues and stuck them in my pocket and preceded to purchase 2 gallons of grey paint for my family room.

A few months had passed and we just happened to be working on a new blue and a new purple fabric design. We were in phase 3 of the design process, balancing had been signed off on and we had just received our first colorized proofs in the mail. Proofing is always performed with design printed on paper, its the best and most accurate way to determine what the coloring will look like on a textile. 

Unfortunately upon our initial and immediate inspection of the artwork, we were simply not getting a good vibe from the coloring. The colors just didn't flow properly or disperse the design as evenly as we were hoping for.

And then it hit me, why not incorporate the colors used in these paint samples? Magically (one revision later) we all unanimously agreed that we had a winner and began prepping the artwork for printing on cotton.

And the grey color? Well I always have to be different, so we filled the area around the hibiscus stem with grey, the same grey we painted our family room in. It gave the hibiscus flowers some additional contrast and balance. That's a true story about the inspiration for that particular design. It has been well received and we anticipate using this very same coloring/design convention with some different colors, possibly red or green and I think that orange would look super cool with that treatment.

Mahalo