If the shirt fits, wear it

Lately we have been getting an increased amount of calls from people asking if we buy slightly worn Hawaiian shirts. The calls usually start out something like "I have worn out all of my shirts and need to replace them" and we know that somewhere during the conversation they will be injecting the phrase "rather than throw them out, would you like to buy them".

First off we only sell new Hawaiian clothing and we do not operate a thrift store. But for the life of me I cant understand why someone would ever want to part with something personal like a well worn Hawaiian shirt, especially if they were high quality shirts came from Wave Shoppe Hawaiian shirts, or another awesome company such as Kahala.

I must admit that I am fine with tossing all of the imported shirting directly into the trash, the designs and construction had no value when they were new. 

While for the most part the vintage shirts tend to stay put, every so often we will get a call pertaining to re-homing someones prized collection. I just cringe when the first words I hear are that that some of the shirts they are re-homing are vintage Hawaiian shirts such as the one pictured below.

Vintage Hawaiian shirt

I can honestly say that I wear my Hawaiian shirts until they will no longer stay on my torso. If the shirt still fits even a little, I wear it. When I do have a shirt that is ready to be retired (which is quite rare), I treat the garments disposal just as if it was the American flag. No way would I be able to simply toss my old friends to the curb like that.

Wave Shoppe has a lot of it's first customers and they tell us that they have been wearing their shirts for 11 years now and they tell us that they still get comments on how great the shirts still look. Not to be a braggart, but that's a statement a lot of shirt makers will never hear.