Most middle-aged men, throughout the year, resort to a very limited range among all the possibilities that fashion offers. Faced with the infinite possibilities it provides, they tend to opt for discreet pieces, neutral tones, predictable outfits, and unpretentious silhouettes. But summer temporarily alters this established order. The climate, holidays, and the feeling of being outside the routine open a small crack in this monotony. And it is precisely through this crack that such an unexpected and revealing piece slips in: the Hawaiian shirt.When we see this shirt, with floral prints and the name it has been given, we quickly suppose it represents the essence of this Pacific archipelago and the cultural past of Polynesia. But the reality is very different. Far from referring to ancestors, these shirts were born in the thirties of the 20th century, when Hawaii had lost its independence for decades and lived under American rule. Turned into a plantation economy, the islands attracted successive migratory waves, especially from China and Japan, thanks to which fabrics, artisanal techniques, and ways of dressing also arrived. In this context, the Japanese tailor Koichiro Miyamoto began to make them in 1935 under the name Aloha Shirts.The first manufacturers resorted to the materials they had at hand: rolls of Japanese fabric originally intended for making kimonos. For this reason, the first prints showed bamboo plants, fans, cherry blossoms, waves, or cranes (tsuru), motifs typical of Japanese iconography. Asian fabrics but on a garment with the morphology of the North American sports shirt. The Hawaiian shirt was therefore not the expression of an intact culture, but the product of a colonial society in which American patterns, Japanese fabrics, and Asian hands had ended up sewing a new identity. Once again, history showed that cultural purity resembles fiction much more than reality.In the late thirties, Hawaii was already a tourist destination for Americans, a phenomenon that after World War II intensified with the popularization of commercial aviation. And, with tourism, the shirt also became tropicalized: cranes gave way to hibiscus, surfers, and ukuleles. The finishing touch, however, was given by Hollywood, when it invented a consummately idyllic Hawaii. Elvis Presley, with Blue Hawaii (1961), ended up stereotyping it as a cultural myth of paradisiacal beaches, surf, women dancing hula and floral necklaces. The return of thousands of soldiers stationed in the islands also contributed, bringing back photographs, ukuleles, and shirts.And if we fell captivated by the warm sound of Elvis's steel guitars, the private detective Magnum finished the job. What man didn't want to wear a Hawaiian shirt if this meant living, even if just for a few days, the carefree and eternally summery life of Thomas Magnum: living in a mansion by the sea, drifting a red Ferrari, and the promise that happiness could be worn with a floral print?