Aloha kākou!
To coincide with the conclusion of this year’s incredible POW! WOW! Hawaii art show in the Kakaʻako area surrounding our warehouse, we are excited to release a collaboration capsule with Gavin Murai of Reckon Shop, using the mural he painted on our very own warehouse wall. As a special addition to the collection, we will have a very limited amount of handmade letterpress prints made by Jiwa Jiwa Press. Please continue reading below for Ola’s backstory on the design and collaboration:
We believe in being students of the game, whether it’s arts, sports, music, film, or design—taking these opportunities and converting them into inspiration. It becomes a symbiotic component within our ecosystem and ultimately becomes a part of the FITTED ethos. None more equally important than our first collection of graphics. Some may know the infamous “Escape To Paradise” reference, but if you don’t, here we go!
In 1993, directed by Brian De Palma, Carlito’s Way became one of the many jumping boards during the genesis of what is now known as FITTED. The classic bad-guy-gone-good, then pressured to be bad again, was the perfect back drop. Carlito Brigante (played by Al Pachino) wants out the game and to move to the Bahamas with his straight and narrow girlfriend to open a moped stand, but his old surroundings have other plans. The now famous movie has not only inspired us to follow our dreams and open a shop, but to open a shop already in paradise. For us the idea of “escape” is layered in truths and realties of actually living and navigating through the socioeconomic disparity of Hawaiʻi. While to the outside world, “escaping” to this place seems like a no-brainer, alas, reality could sting just as hard and paradise becomes lost. Now, 15 years later we find ourselves nestled between some the most expensive real estate locations on the planet.
Kakaʻako is ground zero for POW! WOW! Hawaii, now in its ninth year and we are fortunate have shared in the past six. Our wall sits proudly on Pohukaina near Cooke street. Every year we work with the directors to select an appropriate artist that syncs with our ideology. For 2019, we had the opportunity to team up with Gavin Murai (Reckon Shop), who happens to be one of our own to tackle this monstrous wall. We took a “designer’s approach” to this and because of the size, our whole team including friends jumped in to kokua.
We introduced into the ethos “The Secret” in October 2018, which shares the same thought principles as “Escape To Paradise.” Gavin combined the two and added some makawalu in the mix, resulting in our new design “The Secret Escape.” Equally important to our process of design, “makawalu” was a theme we explored many walls ago (Gaia/Solomon Enos/Prime) and still lives on in the layers beneath. This level was added with another newly introduced design called “Barset,” which became the base layer for “The Secret Escape.” Much like our recent Glitch logo, the bold typography of “Escape To Paradise” gets the disrupted treatment in “Barset,” pulling its underlying DNA from hae Hawaiʻi, our state or national flag. By removing the union jack and distilling the ideology to the direct design brief Kamehameha ʻEkahi instructed, these eight bars represent the eight major islands in Hawaiʻi. Each one unique, each one strong, each one resilient!
And for the very first time, we decided to commemorate this wall mural and IP (intellectual property) with a capsule collection with Gavin. Included in the collection is our new Escape2Paradise [Barset] tee in black, The Secret Escape tee, long-sleeve tee, and hoodie in white, guava, and orange respectively, and a new Kamehameha 59FIFTY in all-black polyester pique with a satin trilock inner liner.
We also have a very special limited edition letterpress poster, each one handmade by the good people at Jiwa Jiwa Press and individually numbered. Circling back to my opening statement about being a student to the game, we wholeheartedly believe Jiwa Jiwa Press shares in this same mindset. Meticulously skilled with their in-house vintage letterpress machine, it reminds us all that beauty is found within the process as much as the end result. We encourage you to take a look into the forgotten art of letterpress and fall in love with our consistent favorite, the irregularities! Mahalo to Kila, JJparkz, Preston and Ola on the wall this past week with Gavin!
