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You can also learn a lot from losers.
In February, Bill Murrray, who was nominated for a Golden Globe as a supporting actor in the film "On the Rocks", appeared on video at the award ceremony for the film.
The actor wore a shirt that looked like a tattered tropical pattern and was beaming with a full martini glass in front of the camera, even though he had lost the Golden Globe to Daniel Kaluuya, who was also nominated.
The performance went viral, Murray's positive “Zoom Energy” was praised on Twitter - and in the end he was named the winner of the evening anyway.
Bill Murray at the Golden Globes
Source: NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
The other winner was the Hawaiian shirt the 70-year-old wore.
And he's not the only one right now.
Singer Justin Bieber was seen on social media in a red model in early April, model Cara Delevingne wore hers openly in a bikini and Rihanna was strolling through Los Angeles in March in a men's shirt by Celine, printed with pastel-colored palm trees by Californian artist Tyson Reeder.
The label Saint Laurent sells minimalist interpretations of the Hawaiian shirt in black and white, at Valentino the classic is turned into a crocheted version with embroidered hibiscus flowers, and the young French label Casablanca has specialized in printing ice cream-colored South Seas landscapes with the kitsch factor of a screensaver on silk shirts.
The bright colors of the shirts by the young label Casablanca emphasize the kitsch factor of the classic
Source: CASABLANCA;
Rachpoot / MEGA / GC Images / Getty Imagess;
images / Mary Evans;
Picture Alliance / Photoshot
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For a long time, the famous leisure classic was seen as a tourist void, which one hid deep in the closet after the holiday or smiled at a comedian like Jürgen von der Lippe.
But wanderlust for palm beaches is likely to be particularly acute right now, and men's fashion has become bolder and more willing to experiment.
The shrill patterned top is therefore not only suitable for older men at the grill, but also for fashion fans who can afford a Prada shirt with a banana print, for example.
Racism allegations against designers
But the Hawaiian shirt is not undisputed.
The debate about cultural appropriation in fashion has led to the fact that many items of clothing in designer collections are judged more critically according to whether a white designer uses other cultures too freely.
But does the Hawaiian shirt also belong to it?
A few weeks ago Princeton professor Zara Anishanslin described the Hawaiian shirt in the British "Guardian" as the "fashionable counterpart to the plantation wedding", a reference to former cotton plantations in the southern states of the USA, which are still booked as event locations today .
In their eyes the shirt represents "the colonialism, imperialism and racism of the USA against the indigenous population of Hawaii".
In 2019 the anthropologist Holly M. Barker from Seattle accused the animated series "Spongebob" of racism and cultural appropriation - also because the characters in it wear Hawaiian shirts.
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So far, however, the latest designer versions of the Hawaiian shirt have not aroused collective outrage - which is probably also due to the fact that its story has less to do with the historically, spiritually or politically charged costumes of a country or people, but with a postcard fantasy, conceived and commercialized by Immigrants and locals for western tourists.
Elvis Presley in 1961 in the film "Blue Hawaii"
Source: Getty Images
Its origins cannot be assigned to any single person or ethnic group.
Chinese and Japanese tailors, who had come to Hawaii as field workers as early as the 19th century, sewed the shirts from Japanese kimono fabrics.
The cut was reminiscent of the cotton shirts of field workers on the one hand, and the uniforms of western US sailors on the other.
The way of wearing, in turn, was inspired by the shirt-like costume of the Filipino immigrants, who
did not put
their
barong tagalog
in their pants, but let it hang out
.
Brought in the 1920s
Ship tourists took the colorful shirts home as souvenirs and thus ensured the transpacific marketing of a Hawaiian way of life.
In the 1930s, Hawaiian entrepreneurs perfected their marketing strategies: in 1935, a shirt maker named Musa Shiya named his models “Aloha Shirt” in a newspaper ad.
The first Aloha shirt label was founded in 1936 by a businessman named Ellery J. Chun.
The more Hawaii developed into a vacation destination and place of longing, the more the Hawaiian shirt became the identification mark of the casual, sun-kissed man - embodied by Elvis Presley in "Blue Hawaii", or by US President Harry S. Truman on the cover of "Life" - Magazine.
Grace, sympathy, kindness
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Over the decades, it has become a mass-produced cheap souvenir, colorful in summer and, thanks to its wide cut, can also be worn with a beer belly. The Hawaiian shirt was put in a rather weird light by the only two-year-old American movement of the “Boogaloo Bois”, which consists primarily of gun freaks and extremists who believe in the approach of a second civil war. Members of the militant group now like to present themselves in Hawaiian shirts. This idiosyncratic uniform is the result of a series of inside jokes and puns that, spun on in chat forums, led from “Boogaloo” to “Big Luau” and thus established a connection with the Hawaiian shirt.
The images of heavily armed men protesting in front of government buildings in cheerful aloha shirts have scratched the image of the Hawaiian shirt, especially in the USA.
But it has proven to be a survivor, as demonstrated by its recent comeback.
And his friends hope that the shirt's original symbolism will not be forgotten.
At least that's what Dale Hope, a local manufacturer of Hawaiian shirts and author of the book "The Aloha Shirt: Spirit of the Islands", said in an interview with the online magazine "Vice" last year
.
"Aloha means to live in harmony with the people and nature around you and to meet them with grace, sympathy and kindness," he said.
"That's what the Hawaiian shirt stands for." Billy Murray would probably have put it a little drier.
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