Aloha Shirt Lady
Jacqueline Vienna has been sewing on Kauai for nearly 50 years, a treasure in the small town of Hanapepe
She’s one of the best reasons to veer off the highway onto the side street that takes you into Hanapepe (hah-nah-pay-pay), find a place to park along the main street lined with buildings that look as if they’ve been there for more than a hundred years (many have), and stroll.
Jacqueline Vienna is the seamstress of Hanapepe, though really, she’s the seamstress of Kauai, having lived here for nearly a half century and making more aloha shirts than she can count. Faster, too. She likes to get your measurements and have your shirt ready within 48 hours.
Or in my case, the next day.
The Aloha Shirt Lady doesn’t take credit cards (“who wants to deal with all that bureaucracy?” she says), and she has me choose the material I want for my women’s aloha shirt from a half dozen bolts sitting in her work area. She doesn’t have a bunch ready-made, preferring to sew them for each customer. But that means taking off your shirt right there in her shop, putting on her XXL sample, which she then pins to your size.
I’ve been stopping at the Jacqueline on Kauai shop and buying her aloha chicks for years—cute pin cushions weighted with a little sand or ornament-style hanging chicks sans sand—when I’m on Kauai. Dick and I first went into her shop far down the street close to three decades ago where we first looked at her shirts and bought her chicks. The chicks—a sweet nod to the proliferation of wild fowl all over the island after 1992’s Hurricane Iniki—come in bright fabric swatches leftover from Jaqueline’s sewing projects.
Clothing construction is her passion, she says, as she’s been telling people and occasional journalists for years. (We like to read the newspaper and magazine stories she has framed around her shop.) She often says that she began sewing at age 11 and has been at it ever since. And on this current visit, on a whim, I did something I’ve thought of for years: I asked if she’d make me a shirt.
She beamed as if no one had ever made such a request, rising from her sewing machine in the back of her shop overflowing with fabric and ready-to-buy items (her shirts and shorts and Christmas stockings made from the soft cotton of old rice bags have long been big hits).
“Of course, honey,” she said, likely already sizing me up. “What size are you?”
“A large,” I said, tugging on my name brand aloha shirt, one of many that I have and love, in forgiving, generously sized rayon.
“Um hmmm,” she said, handing me the sample to try on.
It turned out—when Dick and I returned the next day to pick up my shirt in a gorgeous polished cotton with an Asian motif blues with gold cranes—that I am an XL in Jacqueline’s world. Oddly, though I’ve been increasing in size for some years now, I didn’t mind the designation because there, nearly sewn below the inside collar of the shirt, was Jacqueline’s famous label with, yes, an XL tag next to it. For excellence, I thought, which it is.
We arrived before my shirt was done, and she asked for a half hour to finish it, which we didn’t mind at all. Before we left, she did one more fitting, draping it over me, folding what would become the placket for the buttons to see how it would fit. “Gotta have room for the ta-ta’s,” she said, adjusting the bust area.
And when we returned, she was ironing the shirt before she took it to two vintage machines we’d never seen in action—a buttonholer and, then sliding over to another workhorse, the button machine that affixes buttons. “I gave up hand sewing buttons years ago,” Jacqueline said, her limber hands placing the coconut buttons just so, then using a foot pedal, sewing them within seconds to my shirt.
I tried it on so she could check it, but, of course, it was perfect. Jacqueline says she can make three shirts in a day, and we believe her, seeing as how she sews for many local businesses and restaurants, using fabric reserved just for them.
Dick took photos, of course, and Jacqueline had a new hanger and plastic sheeting for the shirt. “Don’t you want to wear it?” he asked, as Jacqueline and I looked askance at him. He and I were on our way to meet a friend for lunch at a Mexican restaurant. “Nooooo,” I said, Jacqueline nodding with me.
This is one precious shirt. For $75, I might add, well below the going rate for high-end, manufactured aloha shirts. This is a custom-made, one-of-a-kind Jacqueline creation.
But should you want one of her custom shirts, you have to come visit Jacqueline at her shop in Hanapape. She doesn’t take orders any other way, and she doesn’t ship. She only accepts cash. And she’s worth it.
As if anyone needs more incentive to come to Kauai, Jacqueline Vienna might just be it. Not just for her lovely creations, but for a chance to talk story with a local treasure (who, I imagine, will pooh-pooh that term). But she is.
And we are most grateful to her for her aloha that certainly flows through her hands into her creations… the one I will wear on special occasions and think fondly of her.
“My love for Kauai binds the strings of my heart to the threads of this garment,” her tags used to read. “Promise me one thing: Have fun wearing it, because I loved making it.”
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Jacqueline on Kauai is open daily — “closed only for hurricanes and tsunamis,” she says. She doesn’t have a website. Call her at (808) 335-5797. Or use that newfangled email: msvienna@hawaii.rr.com.
Lovely shirt, lovely story!