Aloha kākou!
For this special Saturday release, we’d like to take you back to our Spring 2016 Hui Collection where the FITTED staff and some of our wholesale accounts designed hats and shared a story or two about themselves or their brand. The final piece to the “Hui” is you, the customer, because without you none of this would be possible.
We’d like to give a big mahalo to Shawn, Lisa, and Scarlett Salazar who camped out and purchased every Hui hat from the collection. To our knowledge, they were the only people who accomplished this amazing feat (especially with Scarlett being a newborn)! We truly appreciate the sacrifices and dedication from the Salazars, so as a small token of our appreciation, we’ve allowed them to design their own hat and tee—and in keeping with the FITTED tradition, it’s accompanied by their own personal and unique moʻolelo (story). We’re honored to have them be the first customers to ever design their own hat and represent you all in our “hui.” We are very fortunate to have them and countless others consistently showing their love and support which drives us to keep doing what we do.
For their honorary addition to the Hui Collection, the Salazars have graced us all with matching keiki and adult Kamehameha snapbacks featuring light teal crowns with red and black accents, as well as a black Brigante tee sharing the same colors. Please continue reading below for a small Q&A with the Salazar family along with the personal story behind their creation.
Salazar ‘ohana’s full Hui collection photo
Salazar ‘ohana meeting with Jared to design their Hui hat
Name: Shawn and Lisa Salazar
Hometown: Albuquerque, New Mexico
Favorite place in Hawaii? If we have to just choose one place, we would say Volcano National Park in Hilo. Really it’s anywhere that we are together, where we can experience something new and are able to learn from our new experiences.
One thing you can't live without? Our family, each other
What inspires you? Seeing people treating others with kindness, seeing other people happy. We like to be a good example and have a positive influence in people’s lives. The spirit of Aloha is everywhere and seeing that being utilized is really inspiring to us.
When did you start collecting FITTED? January 2015
Favorite FITTED hat? Shawn: Day Tripper; Lisa: Aloha Mets Snapback
Best FITTED camping story or most memorable release? All of the 10 year releases. We really had an awesome time at all of the drops related to the 10 year releases.
First FITTED item you owned? 2014 Black Friday Aloha
BLENDED DESTINY KAMEHAMEHA SNAPBACK
By Shawn & Lisa Salazar
For those of you who may not know us, we are Shawn and Lisa. We’ve been following FITTED for almost two years now. We would like to start off by saying that we are truly humbled and appreciative for FITTED to even think about including us in the Hui collection. This is really an honor for us to be able to share our story and hat with everyone. Our desire is for others to be able to relate to our story within their own lives and to hopefully provide a solid hat for all the FITTED enthusiasts.
Our story begins in 1988, where we met for the first time in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We went to middle school and high school together, had the same friends, lived the same lifestyle, however, did not fully devote ourselves to one another until April 2012. Although our lives didn’t unite as one until that time, destiny was definitely in the making! We lived in the same towns, same cities, went on the same vacations (even being on the same cruise ship at the same time), one of us even worked for the others mom for a while. Looking back, it feels as though the universe was preparing us for each other and the lives we are living today. Throughout every life event, through the vastly different life choices we made, through every heartache, success, turmoil, or rocky road, destiny brought us to this place.
Getting married, and both of us moving to Hawaii blended our families. The ultimate blending of our families together was the birth of our baby Scarlett. She is the youngest of our five children, and is adored by all of her siblings! She has two older sisters, Savannah and Trinity, and two older brothers, Mark and Elijah. Scarlett has tied us all together. It has also blended our New Mexican culture with the Hawaiian culture. We have come to realize the two are similar in many ways. The acceptance of new people into your culture and land, the joy of sitting with friends and talking story, as well as the importance of family. Both New Mexico and Hawaii are not just states. They are both a way of life, a culture, a lifestyle, and an ethnicity.
We have been so blessed by the wonderful friends and people we have met and feel are part of our family. Many of those people we have met at FITTED. Through our time trying to get pregnant with Scarlett and in the months since, we have met new family that have helped us celebrate her life. We have watched other friends' children get bigger, and also the evolving of a brand we love and fully support.
Our hat represents the unlimited ability of destiny. Destiny blended all of us together.
Choosing the Kamehameha logo was easy for us, as our daughter was born the day before King Kamehameha day and came home from the hospital on King Kamehameha day in 2015. The light teal of the hat represents the unlimited sky and ocean that are all accepting and all around us. The black is the rough roads that we have overcome to get where we are right at this moment. The Scarlett red represents the amazing beautiful soul that blended our families together as one family, as well as helped bond us to the friends that we consider ʻOhana as well.
Gracias to everyone for reading our story, and supporting FITTED in this Hui Collection. We hope that everyone enjoys the matching keiki and adult hats. Mahalo for helping to create lifelong memories that will forever be cherished and for all of the Aloha that has been shown to us.
