It was balmy in Orlando…all tropical and business casual at MPlanet last week—and not a single aloha shirt in sight.
Yet again, the universe has tilted on its axis, and we barely noticed.
I remember my husband, Dan’s, first aloha shirt. It was in the early 90’s and yes, predictably, it was in Hawaii. It had a green background and oversized fuchsia and yellow flowers. Having come up through the serious make-it-happen 80’s wearing regulation business greys, blacks and whites, Dan found this—the first of many aloha shirts—to be liberating. What wasn’t predictable back then was his daring, yay, virtually revolutionary integration of the aloha shirt into his wardrobe. That shirt went to dinner parties, business casual events, concerts and meetings. It was fresh, youthful: a statement that one had cast away convention and was now a force with which others must contend.
Now I remember his last aloha shirt. It was a couple of months ago on a previous business trip to Orlando. We went to dinner at an upscale chain restaurant close to the hotel. Serving steak and lobster, the restaurant attracts men from multiple generations, but is especially popular with baby boomers.
Resplendent in his aloha shirt, Dan and I were walked past table after table, many of them occupied by leading-edge baby boomers, busily cracking away at their lobsters. And then it struck us both: No regulation business greys, blacks and whites for this crowd. No sir. Each boomer male strutted his individuality, his youthfulness, his joie de vivre in, you guessed it, an aloha shirt. My god! Yellow, plum and orange. Pink, cranberry and green. We looked around the room. And then it hit us. Younger generations of men were enjoying their dinners, as well, but they were garbed in crisp white shirts, accented by subtle hues on a spectrum of tan to grey. Aloha shirts, we realized, had become our generation of men’s light blue leisure suit, and we hadn’t even noticed.
So marketers, here’s the moral of the story. Tommy Bahama is now featuring solid colors. They are a force with which other fashion designers catering to men must contend. They have this daring, virtually revolutionary look about them: liberating!
Carol Orsborn