The Ultimate Aloha shirt?

While sitting and watching for the umpteenth time "From Here to Eternity", am asking if anyone has a Aloha shirt with the same pattern as Pvt Robert E Lee Pruitt wore? Don't show the color but the pattern is pretty clear.

Just curious...…….

Sun Surf makes Ernest Borgnine's shirt from that film, so I'm fairly certain you can get Montgomery Clift's also.

Yes, Sun Surf makes those vintage patterns better than most.

The ultimate Aloha shirt? Is that by price, style, appearance or what? It was when I was looking at Sun Surf, years ago, that my wife suggested that she made an Hawaiian shirt for me. We had talked about the price and my wife, Tina, explained that it takes her ten hours to make an individual shirt. She went on to say that a skilled seamstress, would earn about fifteen pounds an hour, add on the price of three yards of material at fifteen pounds a yard, the interfacing, buttons thread and pattern add another twenty pounds to the costs and you can see why a top quality shirt is priced at well over two hundred pounds. The reason that you can get them much cheaper is because they are mass produced, made in countries where the labour is cheap and the materials used are not of exceptional quality.

Here is a Sun Surf shirts priced at £160.


And here is one, very similar that Tina made. The fabric she bought on line from Barkcloth of Honolulu, it's called: "Bird of Paradise." The reason that mine has short sleeves is because that's my preference, similarly, my shirts don't fasten at the neck because I like the open neck style where the open shirt has a lapel look to it. Each to their own.



Mine also have a unique designer label, of which I'm very proud. Note the deliberate misspelling of maid/made,

I just received this. I LOVE it. The Mrs. not so much. Too bad for her. I’m tiger now.

Bfd70 said:

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I just received this. I LOVE it. The Mrs. not so much. Too bad for her. I’m tiger now.

Click to expand...

I'm not surprised that you love that shirt, it's very distinctive, unusual too, compliments to you.

A hand made shirt is like no other, I certainly couldn't afford to buy the shirts that my missus makes. The work that goes into them is top notch. The buttons and button holes are all strongly backed by layers of interfacing, this helps prevent the sagging that sometimes occurs when the buttons are fastened. The interfacing makes for a very strong collar too. The shirt will wash and iron well, time after time. And because Tina spends that bit extra on fabric quality, fade caused by repeated washing, is negligible.

In keeping with the thread title, the ultimate Aloha shirt, my take on Aloha is a shirt depicting a floral pattern often with a mix of exotic animals. These three shirts are anything but, however they do have an ultimate definition of their own. The first one depicts burlesque performers. Tina made it for me to wear to burlesque shows, where she and her good friend style the artistes hair in a vintage look. The compliments that shirt gets. And the reason it's ultimate, I daren't tell you the cost but if you look up the cost of have three yards of material screen printed, it will give you some idea.

The second shirt was born out of an idea that came to Tina when we were at an old timers classic car show. She came across some fabric depicting MG cars, but the fabric wasn't really suitable for making a shirt. She bought three yards anyway, once home she got to work putting a backing on the fabric, she sandwiched that backing with interfacing, creating a much stronger material. She had also bought some lapel pins and fashioned them into buttons. She has never told me how much that lot cost.

The final shirt she made is especially for Halloween, it's the artist Gil Elvgren's work, screen printed onto fabric of such outlandish colour, it never fails to get noticed. Screen printed again, I gave up asking her how much.