Post #238391 by kctiki on Sun, Jun 18, 2006 7:27 AM

I only have one Hawaiian shirt, but I've recently been thumbing thru some books of shirt collections and found the following info about Sears:

In addition to the "Sears Hawaiian Fashions" line, there were also the "Sears Hawaii" and "Sears Sportswear for pool, beach and patio" lines. A book called "Tropical Shirts & Clothing" by Nancy Schiffer has photos of shirts from both of those lines.

Another book called "The Aloha Shirt" by Dale Hope & Gregory Tozian has a writeup on self taught artist John Meigs whose line of textile designs, "Keoni of Hawaii", were ordered in 1951 by several fabric firms in New York, including Tanbro Fabrics Corporation.

According to the authors of "the Aloha Shirt", a Sears catalog of that era featured rayon crepe sports shirts with Tanbro's prints created by Keoni. The label on the shirts was "Pilgrim" and they were priced at $2.59 for one, or $5.00 for two. Apparently, Meigs, a bit of a character, wasn't too thrilled that some of his designs ended up in Sears Roebuck.

From this I gather that Sears was offering shirts before the August Holland prints, so the only connection was the fact that Sears sold whatever had mass popularity at the time, and this motif, as we know, was popular for several decades.