On a Saturday morning in December, Nakeu Awai sits in a strategic front corner of his shop/studio/archive space in a nondescript strip mall in Kapalama, just down the hill from his alma mater, Kamehameha Schools. At 86, Awai is often hailed as the elder statesman of Hawaiian fashion. Nowadays there's renewed interest in his work—fashion is cyclical, after all—but ask him how he feels about that and he dryly responds, "I don't swim in it." His goals lie elsewhere: "If I can help in any way to perpetuate Hawaiian fashions, call on me."
Maybe that's why Awai isn't as much a local household name as other Hawaii brands like Sig Zane Designs or Manuhealii—yet the founders of both readily credit Awai with helping them early in their careers. In the Native Hawaiian creative community, Awai has "if you know, you know" status.
His bright blue hair ("going to Fantastic Sam's for haircuts—one of those things that wasn't planned but you end up doing") matches his aloha shirt, emblazoned with frolicking squid (by his longtime friend Colleen Kimura, who does business as Tutuvi), a neckerchief neatly tied under the collar. With his boyish bangs and provocative zingers, Awai is a force of mischief.
Near him are racks of his creations: simple sundresses and contemporary riffs on traditional long-sleeve muumuu and aloha shirts, all featuring his singular prints in striking color combinations.
A steady stream of customers enters the shop, devotees looking for a new muumuu or aloha shirt and catching up with Awai's niece, Marvi Rosehill-Ching, who along with Gerald Chun make up the designer's team. The trio is busy dealing with daily duties as well as preparing for the Merrie Monarch Festival, the annual hula competition and Hawaiian cultural touchstone that takes place in April. Nakeu has participated in the festival's Hawaiian Arts & Crafts Fair "pretty much since the beginning of time," quips Rosehill-Ching, packing up "lock, stock and barrel" and shipping it all to Hawaii Island.
Awai's road to becoming an Island fashion icon was a winding one. He was head of his high school newspaper, and he studied journalism at the University of Washington. But the emphasis was on broadcast news at the time, which didn't interest him. But theater did interest him—students in that department were lazy but still got good grades, he jokes. He was cast in productions and learned costuming. In 1960 he graduated with a degree in drama and headed to the respected (and now defunct) Corning Summer Theater program in upstate New York. While there, friends enrolled in the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, encouraged him to give journalism another shot in the university's master's program. But the racism he encountered spurred him to quit after one semester. As Rosehill-Ching puts it, it was a defining moment of his life.
He headed back to New York, where he took dance classes and became good enough to make it a career. But still he encountered racial barriers. "It wasn't until after I left New York that I realized the Broadway shows were all white, and they would never have hired me because I would have stood out. I auditioned and auditioned and I thought, 'What the s**t, how come I'm not being selected?'"
Instead, he found work on touring productions such as Rodgers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song (which originally ran on Broadway from 1958 to 1960 and included Hawaiian performer Ed Kenney in its cast) and did children's theater, performing at schools up and down the East Coast.
He was cast in a production called Aloha Hawaii, created to tour in Germany. Awai still has the program, which calls hula "Hawaii-Ballet." The songs were all translated into German from English, and out of a cast of thirty-six, only six were Hawaiian. As a stranger in a strange land, the pull of the Islands remained strong: While on a trip to Greece before the show opened, Awai sat on a beach and turned on his radio. "I heard, 'Aloha, this is Webley Edwards saying, Hawaii Calls,'" At the name of the popular radio program recorded in Honolulu from 1935 to 1975 and broadcast around the world, "I started to cry," Awai says.
After a stint in Reno, in a show called Hello Tokyo that starred Jimmy Borges, Hawaii's "gentleman of jazz," Awai moved to Hollywood. He worked as a backup dancer on TV variety shows, hoofing it in support of performers such as Tom Jones. And he made his first foray into fashion: "Another fellow from Hawaii and I learned how to do macrame, and I went around and sold them to places on the Strip and in Beverly Hills," says Awai. They used decorative cord to make things like collars and cuffs to be sewn onto dresses. The enterprising young Awai sold pieces to celebrity costumiers Bob Mackie and Jean Louis.
Awai got another fashion-related opportunity from his mentor, Claude Thompson, a former Alvin Ailey dancer who was a choreographer for theater, TV and film. He was working with Sammy Davis Jr.'s backup dancers in Las Vegas and tapped Awai to dress them. "I was given a $7,000 budget to do costumes for the girls that surround Sammy Davis," Awai says.
As with so many Island-born people who leave Hawaii, Awai felt pulled back after a visit home in the early 1970s. "I saw how old my parents were and felt someone needed to take care of them," he says. And, as countless others before and after him, he had to figure out how to make a living. Hula was out—it wasn't part of his dance repertoire—and modern jazz opportunities were limited, though he did appear in the Paradise Found revue in the Hilton Hawaiian Village Dome (demolished in 1999). "That's when I decided to go into something I was familiar with," he says, "and that was fashion."
Nakeu Awai (seen at right) and Allen Akina with a model in the studio they shared on Keeaumoku Street. Both designers returned to Hawaii from California in the early 1970s, at the start of the second Hawaiian Cultural Renaissance. Awai credits Akina with inspiring him to create his own fabrics.
When he'd left for college in 1956, Oahu's multicultural students dressed monoculturally—high school yearbooks of the era reveal youth kitted out like Father Knows Best extras. He returned to a changed Hawaii, and his timing couldn't have been better. It was the dawn of the second Hawaiian Cultural Renaissance, sparked by the 1971 Kalama Valley protests against Native Hawaiian farmers being evicted to make way for development. Music, art, comedy, drama and literature were all burbling with new talent inspired by Hawaiian and Island life, not taking cues from elsewhere. Native Hawaiians were writing new narratives, and Awai is a great storyteller.
Today, local Gen Z designers make cultural and style puns using traditional fabrics like palaka, the cotton plaid that was once the uniform of Hawaii laborers, to make contemporary streetwear—something Awai did more than fifty years ago, when he started his company. Unfortunately, according to Awai, larger manufacturer Surfline Hawaii had a monopoly on palaka at the time.
"So instead I went into denim," he says, referring to his first collection, which he called Khaki Wahine. It caught the attention of upscale Ala Moana Center boutique Carol & Mary, which commissioned him to design muumuu for their house label. Then Liberty House, the premier department store in Hawaii at the time, hired him to design holoku, the fitted cousin of the muumuu. Awai points to a gown of pale blue Swiss dot fabric hanging beside him, one of the actual holoku made in 1974—the Kaiulani, named after the Hawaiian princess.
Over the years Awai has worked with Island artists to develop a library of designs. Pictured above is "Dream Ladies" by Richard Vyse. Other designs include "Wana Ohe Kapala" by renowned kapa (bark cloth) maker Moana Eisele, and "Ulu" (breadfruit) and "Pahu" (drum), also by Vyse.
"But I hated working with their buyers," says Awai, because they slavishly followed national trends when he was trying to establish a Hawaiian style vernacular. They would request that he use the season's palette. "And I would say, gosh they are not Hawaii colors."
Artist and designer Allen Akina moved back to Hawaii from California at the same time as Awai, and they shared a studio on Keeaumoku Street. Akina created custom fabrics featuring his illustrations of Hawaiian women, which influenced Awai. "I thought that might be the direction that I should go, because it was hard to get special fabrics and if you printed your own, then they would be yours," he says.
So today Awai has amassed a library of designs that he still taps, refreshing them by using new colors and fabrics. This design collection marks a milestone in Hawaiian fashion. While earlier companies created their own fabrics, "Nakeu is credited with being the first Native Hawaiian to use Native Hawaiian motifs," says Tory Laitila, curator of textiles and historic arts of Hawaii at the Honolulu Museum of Art, who included Awai in the 2024 exhibition Fashioning Aloha.
Awai commissioned artists such as Moana Eisele, Hiko Hanapi, Douglas Tolentino, Richard Vyse and Sig Zane to create designs. Signature prints include male hula dancers, chanters and kapa (bark cloth)-inspired patterns. "There is longevity in his prints, and one of my favorites is the kahili," says Laitila, referring to the feather standard symbolizing Hawaiian royalty. In 2023 he was wearing his Awai kahili print while in Washington, DC, for a symposium at the National Portrait Gallery. "People were coming up to me and commenting that they liked my shirt. They don't know what a kahili is, but they recognize a beautiful shirt. His designs have a nice interplay of line and color and great use of negative space. They can be appreciated without having to know the background. He operates on those multiple levels."
An aloha shirt in Awai's "Ulu" print illustrates how he keeps the designs fresh by using them in different color combinations and on varied fabrics. This is the same print on the shirt Awai is wearing, to very different effect.
Awai held his first fashion show on July 27, 1974, at Hawaiian Mission Houses Museum. As much impresario as designer, he made his name through such events.
"His fashion shows were crazy and wonderful and sold out immediately," says Maile Meyer, owner of Native Books and Na Mea Hawaii, who's an all-around Native arts catalyst and counts Awai as a mentor. "He didn't need a bigger circle. All the grand dames were there, people who understood that there was Hawaiian fashion and that it could make a cultural statement using iconography that was relevant and contemporary."
Laitila included Awai in Fashioning Aloha as much for the way he does business as for his designs. "One of his business models was almost like haute couture," Laitila explains. "You would go to a trunk show, and he would have a lunch, with entertainers. You would pick a design, then you would go to the shop and it was tailor-made for you. It's a community."
Awai's clothing is manufactured in Honolulu, which is getting harder as the ranks of skilled seamstresses and patternmakers dwindle. And while Chun and Rosehill-Chang do a lot of the legwork for him these days, Awai controls all aspects of production, from fabric design to final sale. "There are few people who can do that. He is able to because of his following. Other designers have tried but they're no longer around," says Laitila.
As a dancer, Awai is acutely aware of the human form and movement. "He has an innate ability to make clothes look beautiful on the body," says Laitila. He dressed the kumu hula (hula teacher) Leinaala Kalama Heine for her appearances with the acclaimed Brothers Cazimero music duo. "He was instrumental in giving us a so-called look," says Robert Cazimero. "I trusted him, and he made some of the most interesting designs for my brother and I to wear. He dressed Leinaala in a style that was truly elegant and above the norm of something that would be considered Island wear. Every time we had a new show, he always made sure she looked spectacular." Anyone who attended the Brothers Cazimero's popular May Day concerts at the Waikiki Shell understands what he is talking about.
Awai has also outfitted hula halau (hula troupes), including Cazimero's all-male Halau Na Kamalei. He recalls his halau wearing tied pants designed by Awai for a concert in support of Kahoolawe, the island once used by the Navy as a bombing range. "It brought the house down," says Cazimero. "Nakeu was responsible for quite a few of those May Day and Merrie Monarch moments, and for that I will always be grateful."
Awai outside his Kapalama shop/studio, where he has worked since the 1970s. For half a century he has dedicated himself to perpetuating Hawaiian fashion, mentoring and encouraging new generations of designers who have followed in his footsteps.
Meyer champions Hawaii artists and products at her shops, which are now Honolulu institutions. It was Awai, she says, who inspired a group of local artists and artisans to hold what today would be called a pop-up shop for the 1995 holiday season.
A new generation of Honolulu creatives were developing wares—from clothing and accessories to ceramics and housewares—that celebrated local ways and traditions. People like Grant and Janet Kagimoto of Cane Haul Road, Philip and Mieko Markwart of One by One, Danene and Pono Lunn of Manuhealii and lei maker Bill Char all knew each other through Awai and from participating in the thriving craft fair circuit. Meyer, who at the time had a Hawaiian bookstore and art gallery up the street from Awai's shop, fondly remembers the gang meeting up for lunch at Golden City Chinese restaurant in Kalihi. The holiday market would take place at 222 Merchant Street, where Jim Delano was roasting Lion Coffee beans in the basement. "Nakeu said, 'Let's do this.' So we did it," says Meyer. "It was so successful that we all stayed." It became the original Native Books and Beautiful Things, a hui, or cooperative, of the artists. Meyer says many of the beautiful things in the store were secured through Awai's contacts.
"We used to have the most hilarious events and parties. Nakeu was an incredible mentor, and I'm a bookseller today because he had total faith in the Hawaiian way of being. He had the audacity to be a Hawaiian in fashion at the time, to be outrageous and fun. He was no holds barred," says Meyer.
In 2023, Awai celebrated fifty years in business with a fashion show at the Honolulu Night Market in Kakaako, and there's lately been a resurgence of interest in his work as Hawaii undergoes a muumuu renaissance. Since 2015, January has been Muumuu Month in the Islands, a movement started by Kauai designer Shannon Hiramoto. In 2022 then-Gov. David Ige made it official. Awai has had overtures from people interested in buying his business, but he waves them off and shows no signs of slowing down.
"If you see who comes into his shop, they are the children of the children of his original customers," says Meyer. "He has created a lot of comfort for Hawaiian men and women with familiar imagery and colors that work for our palettes. He doesn't pander to anyone. He loves Hawaiian ways of being, knowing and dressing."
