Pop Culture of Hawaiian Shirts
Hawaiian shirts have become a symbol of pop
culture and the retro look. Beach movies of the
1960's starring the likes of Elvis Pressly, as
well as Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello
popularized the look of the Hawaiian shirt and
other tropical fashions. The sexy, fun images of
the beach were glorified by the Hollywood image.
This fueled the image of the Hollywood icons,
the suntanned, muscular, statuesque men; and the
suntanned, voluptuous, sexy women. While the men
would don the Hawaiian shirts on the beach, the
women would strut around in their colorful
bikinis and sarongs.
Even during the 1930s, Hollywood film stars
would sometimes wear a silk Hawaiian shirt to a
movie premier.
Hawaiian shirts were also worn by Montgomery
Cliff, Burt Lancaster, Ernest Borgnine and Frank
Sinatra in the movie "From Here to Eternity."
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the Hollywood elite
were photographed during their Hawaiian
vacations while wearing their Aloha attire. This
glamorous Hawaiian style of the 1950s and early
60s was transformed into a more casual Hawaiian
style of the later 1960s and 1970s. The Hawaiian
beach fashions continued to thrive during the
tumultuous, sub-cultures of the 1960s and 70s;
in other words, throughout the hippie era. After
all, it was the era of the flower children, why
wouldn't they display flowers in their apparel!
However, the Hawaiian shirts and other apparel
became more mainstream, and it continues to
thrive today.
Hawaiian shirts were commemorated in such TV
shows as Hawaii Five-O, Hawaiian Eye, Magnum PI,
and Miami Vice from the 1950s onward. There is
even an original Hawaiian shirt worn by Tom
Selleck in Magnum PI hanging in the Smithsonian
Institution.
Hawaiian shirts were popular with musicians, as
well. Musicians such as The Beach Boys and Jimmy
Buffet have worn, and continue to wear, Hawaiian
shirts during their concert appearances. Their
music celebrates that tropical feeling of summer
fun. After all, what is more synonymous with
summer than the music of the Beach Boys and
Jimmy Buffet, thus it stands to reason that they
should be enhancing summer, not only with their
music, but in their appearance as well.
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