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

Hawaiian Shirt Design from the Archives

 

While reviewing some old artwork that we had not yet followed through on (meaning the design never went to print), I came across this one and wondered if anyone can guess what the large flower is? Your hint is this: While this flower is cultivated commercially in the Hawaiian islands and the US mainland, the flower has a genus of South African flowering plants.



I also managed to dredge up the original pineapple photo that we used for the design we utilized in the Wave Shoppe pineapple shirts.

 

While the design is almost retired, you can still read about the process of designing textiles by reading this blog post appropriately titled Designing Hawaiian Print Fabrics

 

With a lot of new design being printed, as well as on the drawing board, it promises to be a summer filled with exciting new and original designs for Aloha shirts and select Hawaiian dress patterns in the Wave Shoppe line.

Mahalo from everyone at Wave Shoppe Hawaiian Shirts

Reverse Print Hawaiian Shirts: Turn Your World Inside Out

Today’s topic is about reverse print Hawaiian shirts and some of the myths and misconceptions that surround them.  If you ask someone what reverse print means to them you will get a variety of responses, with many responses hinging on what trade or task that they are actually familiar with.

People familiar with the technique of printing images or text on the underside of a transparent film or part of a lamination process may say that’s their definition of “reverse print” and to others the modification of your printer properties to achieve a “reverse print” A.K.A mirror image of your fonts, is the proper definition. Both definitions are correct, as well as many others.

But for the sake of discussion I am going to stick with a topic I am an expert on, and that’s Hawaiian apparel, in particular Hawaiian shirts. We sell all sorts of Hawaiian apparel at Wave Shoppe including some reverse print Hawaiian shirts, but you would be amazed by how many people that wear them yet have no idea how they are made.  One common myth is that the shirts are flopped inside out and another myth is that the fabric is somehow printed so that the pattern is muted and dull.

Truth be told the concept is extremely simple. But first let’s do a quick review of how fabric is printed so this will make complete sense to our readers. When a fabric is printed the rolls of white cotton are screen printed by a machine, usually in a continuous run. The coloring or dye lot is pressed into the exposed layer of the raw fabric, and then dried, producing the vivid and often colorful patterns that you see in the shirts.

When the dye is applied it’s absorbed by the fabric and how saturated the fabric get depends on the fabrics gauge and or thickness and thread count, as well as the pressure used during application.

On a good print job the dye will almost ooze from the underside (non-printed side of the fabric) producing a dull toned down, yet mirror image of the design being applied, as illustrated below.

So at this point we have covered the basic aspects of printing fabric. The soft rule for when you are selecting candidate fabrics for reverse print Hawaiian shirts is that you focus on the undersides of the fabrics (as shown above) and try imagine what they would look like as a shirt.

With a little experience under your belt you will come to know that not all fabrics are good candidates, some have too many dominant colors that have bleed through and some don’t have enough. What you don’t want is a shirt that is so poorly dyed that all you see is the thread weave or worse, a visibly low thread count. You objectives are to make a muted looking Hawaiian shirt that looks a bit more stylish than a ghetto looking shirt that was simply flipped inside out.

Once you have made your selection you’re off to the races. All that’s left is to lay out the layers of fabric with the original printed side down and then start cutting the components of the shirt. Sewing will put it all together and presto, you will have a reverse print Hawaiian shirt! The shirt we used for illustration purpose’s is for sale and is appropriately referred to as our Blue Green Reverse Print Hawaiian Shirt which is a big hit with our reverse print customers.