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A Signature Hawaiian Textile With a Rich History Is Making a Splash in the Fashion World
The blocky, plaid palaka design has evolved beyond its roots as simple workwear, crossing over ethnic and class lines as a symbol of local pride
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The crowd in Hilo’s Afook-Chinen Civic Auditorium is thick on the first day of the Merrie Monarch Hawaiian Arts & Crafts Fair. Intent on seeing the work at each booth, people slowly make their way through the room to appreciate jewelry made from tiny Niihau shells, lauhala hats with woven hala leaves, carved koa bowls, aloha wear and some of the finest Hawaiian featherwork.
While a highlight of the annual Merrie Monarch Festival in Hilo is its internationally acclaimed hula competition, the central purpose of the weeklong spring event is the perpetuation, preservation and promotion of Hawaiian culture. More than 150 Hawaiian Islands artisans display their works at the fair, and even more are spread throughout the city in pop-up makeke (markets) that showcase traditional and modern work.
At every makeke, different versions of palaka, a blocky, plaid textile with deep roots in local culture, are on display. Booths are packed with shirts, shorts, dresses, towels, bags, water bottles and hair clips in a rainbow of colors from red to violet. Palaka might be mistaken for a standard checkerboard picnic print by first-time visitors, but “for those who know, they know,” says Dale Hope, a historian and author of The Aloha Shirt, “and it’s special.”
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More than simply a pattern or type of fabric, palaka represents the many cultures that have come to create the Hawaiian Islands of today through their traditions and hard work. It may not be as immediately eye-catching as an aloha shirt, but there’s a reason why palaka appeals to locals and why it’s experiencing a renaissance today.
History of palaka as workwear
In the early 1800s, sailors from England and the United States visiting the Hawaiian Islands wore loose-fitting, long-sleeved shirts called frocks. It’s believed that the term palaka evolved as a local transliteration of the word “frock.” According to a 1976 article by Alfons L. Korn, a former English scholar at the University of Hawaii, a resident of the Kalaupapa leprosy settlement named Peter Young Kaeo reported in an 1873 letter to his cousin, Queen Emma of Hawaiʻi, that he’d visited the settlement store and bought cotton twill “to make me some frocks palaka.” It’s the first known use of the word palaka to describe that style of cloth.
Historical sources do not directly connect these early frock garments that became trade goods with the woven cotton plaid design. Over time, “palaka” became descriptive of the design and not the garment itself. “Even though the original fabrics and designs of palaka clothing came from elsewhere, it evolved in Hawaii as clothing of the place,” says Hope. As someone who grew up on Oahu, wearing palaka is one of the ways he chooses to show his appreciation.
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“The fabric is yarn-dyed, woven using four or eight intersecting lines, and is typically white and some base color,” says Max Mukai, who founded apparel brand Kahui Palaka with his mother, Dawn Mukai, in 2020. When his grandfather, James Shizuru, was growing up on the Waialua plantation on the North Shore of Oahu, the base color was navy or red. “In plantation days, the fabric was very affordable, and today it’s become one of the more expensive fabrics to source,” Mukai says.
Immigrants from China, Japan, Portugal, the Philippines and other countries came to the Hawaiian Islands in the late 19th and early 20th century as contract workers on plantations and ranches. The first sugar plantations on Hawaii Island’s Hamakua Coast were small independent enterprises in the late 1800s; in the early 1900s, mergers combined several area plantations. Palaka’s signature blue-and-white check was especially appealing to Japanese immigrant workers, reminding them of traditional indigo-dyed fabrics in Japan. A visit to the Honokaa Heritage Center illustrates just how omnipresent palaka was during that time, with photos featuring workers wearing the original palaka fabric—a somewhat heavy, dense weave that kept skin protected in an era of long hours of physical labor.
The entrepreneur Zempan Arakawa from Okinawa, Japan, opened his clothing supply and general store, Arakawas, in Waipahu in 1909. Located near Oahu’s Waipahu Sugar Mill, the store became one of the largest producers of palaka shirts before it closed its doors in 1995. According to Hope, Arakawa’s youngest child, Goro, used to say that “palaka is more aloha than the aloha shirt.” That statement rings true considering that palaka predates the aloha shirt, a collared, button-down short-sleeve shirt with tropical prints that first became popular in the 1930s.
The utilitarian palaka work shirt wasn’t worn only by plantation workers—it was also a favorite of the paniolo, or Hawaiian cowboys. Captain George Vancouver of the Royal Navy introduced cattle to the Hawaiian Islands when he gifted King Kamehameha I six cows and a bull in 1793. From there, the cattle population and the beef industry grew. In 1832, Mexican vaqueros from California (when it was part of Mexico) came at the request of Kamehameha’s son, Kamehameha III, to impart their knowledge. Hawaiian cowboys picked up the vaqueros’ skills and created a distinct way of life that fuses the Wild West with the aloha spirit. That paniolo culture remains strong today throughout the Hawaiian Islands.
Quick facts: Origins of the Hawaiian shirt
- Japanese women in Hawaii most likely shaped kimona fabric into the first aloha shirts in the 1920s and 1930s. Once tourists and celebrities took to wearing them, the boldly printed shirts took off. By the 1940s, the garment garnered more than $11 million in annual sales.
“The thick fabric was difficult to pierce through, like mattress ticking,” says Hope. “It was ideal as workwear because it couldn’t rip easily and it protected the wearer from getting scratched and poked.” The existing usage of palaka on Hawaiian plantations evolved easily to paniolo work in wet, windy upcountry weather. The fabric’s practicality of being tough, breathable and easy to move in was a boon to many outdoor workers, whether that work was in the field, on the ranch or on the docks.
A point of pride
Palaka is considered the denim of Hawaii by many, both because the durable fabric was used as a protective measure for people who were working in the fields, and because it’s so ubiquitous that it seems everyone has had at least one palaka clothing item.
Like denim, over the years, palaka evolved from a practical clothing choice for laborers into a nostalgic expression of one’s identity in the islands.
“What’s unique about palaka is that it’s something deeply identified with Hawaii, something that makes this place authentically itself,” says Andy Reilly, curator in the Fashion Design and Merchandising Program at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. “With many people tracing their family’s experience through plantation and paniolo history, the shared connection is a source of pride.”
Over time, palaka proved that it has no bounds. The textile has been worn by all socioeconomic levels and in every setting, from fields to offices. Politicians in Washington, D.C. have even sported it.
“Growing up in Honolulu, when going to parties or church, it was a common sight to see mainly the older generation wearing palaka shirts,” says Daniel Akaka Jr., the cultural ambassador at Hawaii’s Mauna Lani resort. “Uncle Danny,” as he’s known affectionately, shares ancestral knowledge with residents and visitors alike. “When my dad [former U.S. Senator Daniel Akaka] decided to go into politics, he often wore palaka shirts, and he got many of them from Arakawas.”
In the 1960s and ’70s, after decades of colonial repression of Native Hawaiian cultural practices, the Second Hawaiian Renaissance (the first was in the 1870s and 1880s under King Kalākaua) brought about a renewed focus on Hawaiian language, music, hula, ocean voyaging, and Hawaiian identity and sovereignty. Hawaiians made concerted efforts to show the world the importance of Indigenous knowledge. To this end, the Merrie Monarch Festival was established in 1964, and, in 1976, a dedicated crew of voyagers sailed Hokulea, a replica of an ancient Polynesian voyaging canoe, from the Hawaiian Islands to Tahiti using non-instrument wayfinding navigation.
In the 1970s, progressive activists launched the Palaka Power movement, an ideological defense of the attempts of local people to maintain and hold power against outside forces from the continent. The political movement influenced the state’s 1978 Constitutional Convention, a watershed moment that helped preserve Hawaiian culture and right wrongs that the government had done to Native Hawaiians since the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi in 1893. While some delegates wore palaka shirts, the movement’s name was more symbolic for those who identified with progressive labor reforms and the fabric’s ties to hard work, perseverance and the strength of the people.
“[The textile] reflected the roots of where many of those people came from,” says Anna Lui-Kwan Akaka, who serves as a co-pilot to her husband, Daniel Akaka, at the Mauna Lani resort. “They came from immigrant families who labored in the fields. They worked hard. They became a part of the interwoven fabric of Hawaii. As they rose, they never forgot their humble beginnings.”
Ultimately, convention delegates made breakthroughs on Native Hawaiian issues, like protecting important agricultural land, enshrining water rights and establishing Hawaiian as an official state language alongside English, as well as creating the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and adding a constitutional right to privacy to the state’s Bill of Rights.
A resurgence of palaka in the fashion world
By the 1990s and 2000s, palaka’s purpose moved from function to fashion, as it started to appear in greens, pinks, yellows and other colors. Today, the fabric is commonly used at family reunions, graduations, showers and coming-of-age ceremonies. And it was everywhere at Merrie Monarch this year.
“I tend to gauge things like that at Merrie Monarch. It’s like a Hawaii fashion week, and you see people really innovating,” says Paul Sullivan, founder of the clothing brand Western Aloha, which honors the paniolo lifestyle. “Palaka is having a renaissance right now.”
Sullivan was inspired to include palaka in his line after seeing Daniel Akaka at the Mauna Lani resort wearing a palaka shirt and playing ukulele. Western Aloha’s palaka line for men includes long-sleeved shirts in colors from black and white to blends of yellow and gray, all with pearlized buttons.
Other Hawaiian clothing brands have taken note. Born and raised on Oahu, Matt Bruening pays homage to Hawaii with his eponymous clothing line. “Palaka has always been, for me, a representation of local culture, with our blend of people from different places,” he says. The designer has incorporated the textile into his pieces, “bringing in the past and introducing it to the future with changes that aren’t compromising its essence,” he explains. Bruening’s huli towel is a crowd favorite with brown and black palaka in a microfiber fabric.
Sig Zane is the founder of Sig Zane Designs, a Hawaiian lifestyle brand based in Hilo that occasionally references palaka patterns in its apparel and bags. “I remember wearing a palaka shirt more than 60 years ago,” says Zane. “It was a long-sleeved jack shirt—short with a wide band at the bottom—just like those bowling shirts. I wore it until the edges frayed. It was the most comfortable shirt I have ever worn. When an object is held in esteem for a period of time, it becomes a part of the memories. That is the spirit that belongs to palaka.”
Mukai, of Kahui Palaka, thinks that people are longing for the Hawaii of memory. “We’re all just working here, trying our best, and we have a nostalgia for the days of our grandparents,” he says.
Perhaps this is a new moment of Palaka Power, one that recognizes the importance of the original Native Hawaiian culture and those cultures that have joined throughout the years to make Hawaii what it is today. As the Hawaiian Islands grapple with the effects of a changing climate and work to transform an outdated tourism model to a framework rooted in cultural integrity, regenerative principles and systemic equity, palaka continues to tell the story of this place.
“Palaka is a humble fabric, and wearing it shows I’m proud of where I’m from,” says Bruening. “It has the wonderful tension of being humble and being mindful of what it took to get here.”
From Merrie Monarch craft booths to Foodland cooler bags, palaka is an indelible symbol of Hawaiian local culture. For many, seeing the fabric is nearly as comforting as the warm, floral-scented air that greets each person when they return home to Hawaii. Like the slower pace, the way people “talk story” and show up for each other, palaka is special.
“When we travel, I always have a palaka shirt with me,” says Akaka. “Wherever we go, we can spot anybody wearing palaka from a distance, and we say, ‘Ah, somebody from Hawaii.’”
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