A Signature Hawaiian Textile With a Rich History Is Making a Splash in the Fashion World

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.” 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. 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. As someone who grew up on Oahu, wearing palaka is one of the ways he chooses to show his appreciation. 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.

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.