FASHION: One of the world's most successful Hawaiian-shirt designers is an Irish artist livingin Wexford, writes Deirdre McQuillan.
If clothes could talk, the Hawaiian shirt would shout "Summer!" louder than anything else. An enduring icon of the island paradise that first opened up to tourism in the l930s, the aloha shirt's colourful prints and simple shape summed up the islands' relaxed, easy-going lifestyle; visitors went home wearing vacation memories of sunsets, beaches and flowers on their backs.
Hawaiian prints continue to be enormously popular as well as a source of inspiration for many international designers, most recently Junya Watanabe, Miu Miu and Paul Smith, while vintage shirts from the l930s to the l950s are now collectors' items.
Of the many people who design Hawaiian prints today, one of the most successful is an Irish artist, Maeve O'Byrne from Dublin, who has created more than 19 original textile designs for the giant Kahala Hawaiian Japanese sportswear company. One of her shirt designs called "Drive-in Movie" broke all sales records in March 2000 when it was first issued and has become the most requested print in the world. Some 400,000 shirts were sold in three days in the first weekend they went on sale between California, Tahiti, Florida and Japan; the print is now in its third edition. The only European in the company which employs more than 100 artists, she was selected to design a special shirt for the recent Cannes Film Festival.
"A shirt should tell a story. A real aloha shirt will be made in cotton and silk mixes, or cotton rayon, with pure coconut shell buttons and breast pockets matching up with the motifs. When somebody wears it they should feel the aloha spirit, in beautiful cloth, beautifully made," says O'Byrne, who is now based in New Ross, Co Wexford, where she works from a tiny studio in her home. Since leaving Dún Laoghaire School of Art with a first-class degree in painting and fine art at the age of 18, she has spent the past 15 years living between California and Hawaii. Turn on MTV or the news in Hawaii and her shirts can be seen on newsreaders and music stars.
On her latest visit to the islands with her young son, Eoin, a few months ago, she saw an old man in his 90s wearing one of her shirts, and she signed it for him. "I was so moved that on a simple walkabout in Chinatown, somebody was wearing one of my shirts," she says.
Modest about her success and blessed with a sunny personality, O'Byrne's career is as colourful as her vibrant aloha prints. "I always wanted to travel and to paint," she says. To support herself at college, she worked as a chef. On graduation she left for New York, where she did drawings and paintings for bars. Later she moved to San Francisco, working in restaurants and painting sets for the San Francisco Opera House. Commissioned to do a big window display for the designer Valentino in Bergdorf Goodman, she used the proceeds to take off for Hawaii for two months. It was the start of a love affair with the Polynesian islands that has continued ever since. While there, she painted and taught in the Honolulu Academy of Art.
Her big break came when the wife of a celebrity chef called Roy Yamaguchi - who had a string of restaurants throughout the Pacific Rim - saw one of her paintings and commissioned 28 for the restaurants. "I was given a year to do it and spent a lot of time studying Hawaiian history such as star navigation systems, coconut lore, hula dance history and so on for the themes. It was such an education and the challenge was great." Her exuberant colour sense and passion for Polynesian culture took shape in the paintings she created and caught the attention of Dale Hope, creative director of Kahala and a connoisseur of Hawaiian shirts.
"Dale said he loved my colour sense and convinced me that I would make a great textile artist. He told me I was good with detail. But the process of designing shirts is like a mathematical puzzle. It is about optics, about colour working on the body and colour intensity for the repeated image. I have to think of wearers from 16 to 95 years old, using 12 colours which I break down into six colour ways."
Once she has completed her original painting in oil or gouache, making sure that the top and base of the painting marry and colours blend well, it is despatched to Hawaii, approved and then sent to Japan, where thousands of yards are printed in various combinations of colours. "For menswear, you never use pink or purple; men
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don't like them, preferring more muted colours like mustard and navy," she says.
Known as "Little Wave" in Hawaii by her surfing friends, O'Byrne continues to make yearly or twice-yearly trips back to Oahu, two miles from Pearl Harbor, and loves "to sit back and watch the waves and the whales, the bottle-nose dolphins, the sharks. The smell of the flowers and the fragrant air in the countryside is heavenly. It is paradise. And they think it's a hoot that an Irish girl is designing Hawaiian shirts," she smiles.
Married to Mark Colfer, manager of Hook Head Lighthouse and Visitor Centre, she has now settled down back home, though her restless spirit is unquenchable. Ideally she would like to work with a textile company in Europe on images that celebrate European or Irish history in the same way that she has done for Hawaii, whether for furnishings or clothing. In the meantime, as the rain pours down outside, she is currently working on a new textile design called Duke's Shack, which depicts the history of the legendary Duke Kahanamoku, the celebrated Hawaiian surfer, Olympic swimmer and Hollywood star whose passion was the ocean. It will hit California and Florida and the whole length of South Beach in October or November. The little Irish wave is certainly making a big splash.