Palaka is once again becoming a popular style of Hawai‘i fashion. The fabric’s increasing popularity is a turning point in the evolution of a garment whose influence over the Islands has persisted for nearly two centuries. In September, a collection of palaka apparel sold-out in a matter of hours at the University of Hawai‘i.
What once endured in palaka fabric was a clear political ideology informed by Hawai‘i’s history. The exact ideology is not subject to consensus. At times, the meaning of palaka has been lost in translation. Today, Palaka is no longer the working-class fabric of the plantation era with strong political connotations. As Hawai‘i’s culture inevitably evolves, however, the fabric is re-generating as an expression of a new era without a clear definition of local identity.
Palaka is an old style with a new sheen. It may come off as ironic, as the fabric’s international roots lend to Hawai‘i’s formation as a dynamic meeting point for different cultures. Palaka, like ‘local’ identity, appears to be evolving in the Hawaiian Islands.
At its heart, what lies in Hawai‘i’s fabric?
The Tangled Roots of Hawai‘i’s Distinct Cloth
The origins of palaka are long worn with mystery. In 1976, University of Hawai‘i linguist Alfons L. Korn broke down the term palaka as a transliteration of the word ‘frock,’ a term used to describe the garments worn by British and American sailors in the decades following the beginning of documented Western contact in 1778. As Hawaiians began to adopt western forms of wear, palaka became an expression of Hawai‘i’s standard form of dress.
The pragmatic, durable fabric acquired a populist identity of its own. Laborers, notably those recruited from the Japanese Empire, soon adopted the dress over the following century. The late Barbara Kawakami, a researcher of plantation life and dress, observed that the palaka style of earlier sailors bore many similarities to plaid-printed fabrics of rural Japan (known as yukata). Palaka, simply put, was regarded as practical because it was hardy, comparatively light, and fairly affordable.
The generations on the plantations grew old and had children who did not work on the plantations. With this ascendant and urbanizing generation, palaka became a more nostalgic, politically charged expression of one’s identity in the islands. Over time, this style was popularized by stores like Arakawa’s General Store in Waipahu.
Andrew Reilly, a Professor with the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s Department of Family and Consumer Sciences, also curates the University’s fashion collection. The University’s collection boasts palaka from Arakawa’s General Store. “What we start to see once we get to the ’80s and ’90s is an explosion of color,” Reilly explained. Pale pinks, mint greens, and other expressive colors become common.
There was a clear distinction between the old palaka of the plantations and the palaka of the newer generations. The fabric of palaka shirts became cheaper as it became printed, not woven. “Real palaka, true palaka, is woven,” Reilly explained.
By 1976, Korn likened palaka clothing to “a uniform or badge, certifying the wearer's cultural identity and status (or perhaps merely his intuitive sympathies): as when palaka is described in advertisements as ‘Da Kine Checker Cloth’, ‘More Kamaaina than the Aloha shirt.’” Many of the shirts in the University of Hawai‘i’s curated collection seem to confirm this shift in palaka’s purpose.
The descendants of laborers began to re-purpose palaka to express a ‘local’ identity. Palaka became a political expression of Hawai‘i’s distinct identity, as confirmed at Hawai‘i’s 1978 Constitutional Convention.
The Formation of a Political Ideology
“Palaka is a strong cloth,” declared David Hagino circa 1977. “It does not have the fragility or sheen of silk. It represents the strength of our people.”
Hagino saw Hawai‘i’s identity in the fabric. It was a cloth of the people of Hawai‘i from a departed era marked by decades of hard labor, racial injustice, and low wages on plantations, ranches and docks across the Territory of Hawai‘i. Within less than two decades of Hawai‘i’s admission as a U.S. State in 1959, the era belonged to the retired or deceased plantation workers, paniolos, and dock laborers. There was a tangible history to the fabric, one whose legacy could inspire residents who identified with this heritage of hard work and perseverance.
“Palaka is a cloth that has a fascinating, weaving pattern of lines and colors. Its criss-cross pattern represents the interlocking strength of all our people to make one people and one culture.” Hawai‘i’s one people and one culture were expected to be those who identified most with a fabric that protected people “against the wind, sun, dust, and the luna’s whips.”
This was the basis of Palaka Power, a political tract which gained infamy as one of the most significant political manifestos in the State of Hawai‘i’s history.
The tract influenced the 1978 Constitutional Convention. One Honolulu Advertiser profile of then-Delegate (and future Governor) John D. Waihe‘e III described his philosophy as “a derivative of the militant advocacy of ‘localism’ outlined by House candidate David Hagino in a phamplet (sic) called ‘Palaka Power.”
When elected to serve as a State Representative in House District Twelve in November 1978, David Hagino believed the year to be a watershed in Hawai‘i’s history. “I believe that 1978 in Hawaii is our generation’s 1954,” Hagino told a Honolulu Star-Bulletin reporter. “Like in ’54, there won’t be any new achievements right away,’ Hagino warned. ‘I don’t think things have crystallized yet. We have to find a common ground.” Hagino explained that he had written Palaka Power on a whim for a conference of Hawaiians. It was a draft—a working document perceived as a prospective ‘underlying philosophy’—‘a possible agenda and philosophy’—for potential delegates at a then-imagined 1978 Constitutional Convention.
To the young, it was a hopeful premise. Hawai‘i was done trying to become an American place. Could it steer its own path? Could Hawai‘i build out a Constitution that did not look like it was copy-and-pasted from other states? For those assembled delegates, the ethos of Palaka Power inspired Hawai‘i’s re-written preamble to assert that the people of Hawai‘i “reserve the right to control our destiny, to nurture the integrity of our people and culture, and to preserve the quality of life we desire.” It was a declaration of an island people’s liberty, independence, equality, and freedom in an increasingly scattered, globalized society.
Perhaps the declaration was too laden with too nostalgic and grandioise. Hawai‘i, after all, was still getting incorporated as a U.S. State, albeit with strong influence from Japan. Nevertheless, Palaka Power became mythical, lending a certain degree of hysteria about its aspirations to differentiate Hawai‘i and its people as a distinct, even foreign society in the American Union.
At the formal ratification of the Hawai‘i’s 1978 Constitution on Saturday, December 2, 1978, several members of the Convention’s ‘Independent’ faction wore bands across their arms and wrists to seemingly signal their opposition to the new Constitution and its association with Palaka Power. Two such protesters, Anthony ‘Tony’ Takitani and Michael Crozier, were reported as wearing “black armbands over strips of palaka material’ to signal the ‘death of the aloha spirit.’ The doctrine of Palaka Power, by this point, had been defined as “a belief that locals should retain political power and preserve Hawaii’s uniqueness in the face of an infusion of newcomers to the state.”
Hagino, however, would continue to see palaka as less a divisive ideology and more an expression of Hawai‘i’s uniqueness. In invoking the example of McDonald’s serving Hawai‘i staples like Saimin and Portuguese sausage, he appeared to imagine a uniquely local identity capable of resisting the overwhelming cultural—and political—influences of the American continent.
“The question is how we can remain in tune with the times and still remain uniquely Hawaiian,’ Hagino explained. ‘You have to bring something to Hawai‘i when you come and then we’ll make it something uniquely Hawaiian.” In this vein, the 1978 Constitution was not opposed to the outsider. Instead, it was an exercise in adapting the Constitution of the State of Hawai‘i as a document indicative of Hawai‘i’s self-confidence as a distinct place secure outside of its American position.
Hagino’s rise to legislative power mirrored the 1978 Constitution, and the rise of a generation that appeared poised to re-invigorate Hawai‘i’s politics. This generation’s peak arguably arrived eight years later, with the election of John D. Waihe‘e III as Governor in 1986. This era faded by the time Waihe‘e (and Hagino) left office in 1994.
By 1994, the ideology had become associated with a new bastion of entrenched power at the state level. “While the state bureaucracy continues to overflow with friends of the governor,” critic John McLaren wrote in the Star Bulletin on April 4, 1993, “the current and past state administrations have clearly failed to advance any of the broad, idealistic social and political reforms advocated by the proponents of Palaka Power.”
While Waihe‘e’s administration had established a State Water Code and stewarded the establishment of an Office of Hawaiian Affairs (which had begun under his predecessor, Governor George Ariyoshi), McLaren’s abiding frustration was with the corruption of the ideology’s proponents. The corruption of an ideal is only natural in the pragmatic world of politics.
It was only natural, as even the best palaka wears with time, sun, and wear.
What’s Next for Palaka?
Palaka Power, perhaps like the palaka of the ’70s, seems to have fallen out of fashion. “I just don’t know why any people are even interested in [Palaka Power] anymore,” Hagino joked with this writer in October 2025, “I thought it’d be long forgotten.”
Palaka Power’s idealism is the reason it enjoys some staying power, especially among those idealists in our society. Like the palaka attire of the ’70s, ‘Palaka Power’ would carry an enduring, if not controversial, ring to local politics. After all, was the declaration of a local identity intended to exclude outsiders? How could outsiders that believed in Palaka Power join the circle?
Former Governor Ben Cayetano, who was running for the State Senate in 1978, contended in his 2009 memoir that the doctrine had only widened the political gulf between insiders and outsiders. “Preserving local values was important, but ‘Palaka Power’ seemed written to exclude the political outsider, haole and local. I felt excluded. And I think most of the independent Democrats I was allied with felt the same way.” Defining a local identity and excluding outsiders was not the same.
Palaka won’t go away. Pessimism might have dampened the more idealistic variants of Hagino’s manifesto. Manifestos, like the ebb and flow of palaka’s popularity, can grow stale with the years.
However, the era of pessimism is giving way to another wave of interest in palaka. Reilly notes that contemporary designers in Hawai‘i like Matt Bruening and Kiniokahokuloa ‘Kini’ Zamora are re-inventing the fabric. Palaka, while serving as the base of new designs, is subject to innovation.
Hawai‘i’s political culture may deserve such innovation. Palaka power was written for a different generation meeting a different Hawai‘i. Decades after its formation, David Hagino believes a new definition of Palaka Power is long overdue. “I think the younger generation–you guys and the younger ones–you guys have to carve out your own destiny.”
Palaka, however, once inspired a certain populism in Hawai‘i. This populism was never cheap, nor was it expensive. It was accessible and precious, durable and clear. Hawai‘i deserves a spirit of such gravity.
Hawai‘i deserves some true palaka.
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