Releasing exclusively in-store and online this Tuesday, October 6 at 11am HST.
Aloha kākou!
There are graphics that simply look good on a shirt, and there are graphics that carry a story. Home Grown has always belonged to the latter.
For tomorrow's release, we're reaching back into both Hawaiʻi's musical history and our own archives with the return of our HOME GROWN TEE, this time printed on Ivy. The artwork may be familiar with the flowing Home Grown script, the pair of brightly colored hibiscus and the unmistakable visual language of an old Hawaiʻi record jacket—but there's a much deeper story behind it.
That story takes us back to the 1970s.
The decade marked an important period of cultural reawakening throughout Hawaiʻi. What would become known as the Hawaiian Renaissance brought renewed attention to Hawaiian language, hula, music, traditional arts and the broader question of what it meant to preserve and express a distinctly Hawaiian identity in a rapidly changing place. Musicians such as Gabby Pahinui were central figures in that movement, helping bring traditional sounds such as kī hōʻalu back to the forefront while inspiring a new generation of local musicians. At the same time, another type of local musical movement was beginning to take shape over the airwaves.
In 1976, legendary radio personality Ron Jacobs returned to Honolulu and KKUA Radio, where he developed a promotion called Home Grown. Local musicians could submit original songs, with selected artists receiving the opportunity to record their work for a compilation album. Proceeds from the project benefited Habilitat, the Hawaiʻi-based rehabilitation program. What began as a radio promotion quickly became something larger: a platform for singers, songwriters and bands who may otherwise never have had their music committed to wax.
By 1977, the project had reached its second installment: Home Grown II.
And that record is where the artwork on today's tee comes from.
But what made Home Grown II special wasn't simply its cover but of course what was inside and what was expressed and shared.
The record collected twelve songs from twelve different local artists and groups, and together they created something resembling a musical snapshot of Hawaiʻi at the time. There wasn't necessarily one prescribed “Hawaiian" sound. There was folk, soul, rock, island music, disco and singer-songwriter material. What connected everything was not genre, but the perspective. The persepective of these songs were written here, about the beautiful life here, by the people experiencing Hawai'i firsthand.
Nohelani Cypriano's "Lihue" became one of the record's best-known contributions and helped introduce a voice that would become inseparable from Hawaiʻi's soul and contemporary music history. Within the album, "Fujimura Store" reflected on the disappearance of familiar places as development reshaped the islands. "Therein Lies The Beauty Of Hawaii" allows us to reminisce and appreciate Hawai'i while playing guitar along the beach. "Wave Dreams" captured the feeling of returning home and the pull of Hawaiʻi after being away. "Polynesian Girl" brought local disco into the mix, while Na Hoapili's "Oh Akua!" looked backward at Hawaiian history and forward toward the responsibility of teaching culture to the next generation.
That diversity might actually be the most important part of the record. Home Grown wasn't trying to define Hawaiʻi with one sound but it allowed Hawaiʻi to define itself through many voices.
Entertainment writer Wayne Harada, who contributed liner notes to the record, summed up the project with a simple idea: every song had a story. Some dealt with love. Others with the changing landscape of the islands, cultural identity, homecoming or the preservation of things that appeared to be disappearing around them. Taken together, those individual stories became a larger portrait of Hawaiʻi in 1977.
And then, of course, there's the cover.
Two enormous hibiscus blossoms sit underneath that unmistakable hand-drawm Home Grown lettering incorporating those bright reds, oranges and yellows surrounded by layers of green foliage. It's an image that immediately feels familiar without needing to explain itself.
There is an interesting distinction worth making here. Hawaiʻi's official state flower today is the native yellow hibiscus, Ma'o Hau Hele (Hibiscus Brackenridgei). The fiery red-orange flowers illustrated on Home Grown II aren't meant to be a botanical rendering of that particular flower. Instead, they tap into a broader visual language of Hawaiʻi: lush vegetation, color, warmth and something literally growing from the land in which that's where we like to read another layer into the artwork.
A flower doesn't bloom independently of where it is planted. It is shaped by its soil, environment, water and everything surrounding it. In much the same way, being "Home Grown" is about more than simply being born somewhere but in fact about what raised you, what shaped you, you enviroment, and what you carry with you because of that place.
That idea has been part of FITTED for a long time.
Back in 2009 when we first explored the Home Grown concept, we described it as something deeper than hometown pride. It was how we carried ourselves at home and abroad, how we treated people, the lessons passed down from our elders, the food we missed when we were away, the teams we supported and the little things that immediately told another person, "yeah, you from Hawaiʻi too."
We returned to Home Grown again in our 2014 Legacy Collection, bringing back the floral pattern and lettering while directly recognizing the 1977 compilation that inspired it.
So when we bring the graphic back today, it isn't about discovering an old album cover and putting it on a shirt but it's our own little history as well.
For this latest iteration, the Home Grown artwork returns across the back of an Ivy Tee, with the iconic and original-inspired black script sitting above the vivid red and orange hibiscus arrangement. Against the deep green body, the flowers jump off the shirt much like they did against the stark white jacket of the original record. A clean FITTED crest sits on the left chest to finish the front.
