Midweek Magainze - Cover - Muumuu MagicJuly 5, 1995

A Fashion Phenomenon

Joan Andersen Created a Better Muumuu 37 Years Ago And Still Designs Innovative Aloha Wear

 Joan Andersen emerges from a white door near the back of her shop in Kapalama as if she were gliding onto the ramp at an international fashion show in Paris.  In a fitted muumuu that came right off one of the racks a few feet away, her trim figure belies her 63 years.  So, too, do her beauty pageant smile and twinkling blue eyes.

Her demeanor is as warm and engaging as her handshake.  Yet there is a regality about her – not standoffish, but stable and confident.  She pauses in the center of the factory showroom floor, and all eyes – employees’ and customers’ alike – turn toward her.
And in an instant, all of the vibrant colors, patterns, lace, ribbons and fabrics from hundreds of muumuus seem to sweep off the crowded racks in a single brush stroke and attach themselves to this one woman.

This is the world of Princess Ka'iulani Fashions, which has remained the most prestigious line of women’s aloha apparel for 37 years.  It’s a work Andersen helped to create and shape, and she remains firmly in the center of it.

To many people, she’s the reigning queen of aloha fashion.  No one has been in the aloha wear business longer.

“As far as aloha wear is concerned, she’s it,” says daughter Judi Andersen Harrison.

It’s Joan Andersen who is credited with changing the look of the muumuu – from a boxy draping thing invented by missionaries to camouflage the contours of the female figure, usually in loud plumeria and hibiscus prints, to a feminine, fitted look that integrates cosmopolitan designs and fabrics with traditional Hawaiian fashion.

Adds Judi: “She’s always had the creativity everyone wants in this business.  You also have to have a lot of pep, and she’s definitely got it.”

Pep and loyalty run through the Andersen family.  Judi, a former Miss USA (1978-79) who still juggles modeling and acting careers around her husband and three children, joined her father, Jack, brother Jon and sister Jill for Joan’s Midweek interview.  All are, or have been, involved in the family business.  The only one who couldn’t make it was Jaye, the youngest daughter, who now lives with her husband in California.

“There’s a lot of history to my mom and dad – a lot of loving history,” says Jill Andersen Cullinan, who oversees sales and operation for the company.  “My mom goes back to the early years in Hawaii, the time of aloha, lots of warmth and love.  It shows in her work.”

Indeed, the Andersens are a model Kamaaina family.  Joan and Jack have lived in the same house on Wailupe Circle in Aina Haina for 38 years.

Born in Glendale, California, Joan moved with her family to Hawaii in 1937 at the age of 5, aboard the Matsonia.  Her father, Elmer Scott, was a shoe manufacturer who opened a shoe factory.  He sold children’s shoes, but his biggest contribution was introducing steel-toed shoes for cane workers.  Until Elmer arrived, they had been losing toes right and left to the wayward blades of their machetes.

Joan attended Punahou.

“I was a song leader in high school,” she says.  “That was a really big deal back then.  I was always performing something.  I danced the hula from the time I got here.  I was an only child, my mother always kept me busy.”

Her many activities included a run for Miss Hawaii.  She finished as the second runner-up, but a new door opened.  The war movie Go for Broke, about the exploits of Hawaii’s heroic 442nd battalion, was about to be released.  In addition to Van Johnson, the star of the picture, and several other actors, the finalists in the Miss Hawaii contest were invited to tour the country to promote the film.

“It was joint promotion for MGM, United Airlines and the Miss Hawaii Contest,” Andersen remembers.  “I had only been to the mainland once since I moved to Hawaii, so this was a major thing for me.  We got to go everywhere, and had a ball.
She attended girl’s school in upstate New York, Briarcliff Manor, for a year, then enrolled at the University of Colorado, where she would meet her future husband.

“I saw her picture in the Denver Newspaper,” Jack recalls, as if it were yesterday.  “She had been named the home show queen.  I remember saying to myself:  “That’s the girl I’m going to marry.”  They met at a party.

“He was incredibly handsome,” Joan says.  “Two months later we were engaged, and six months later married.  He’s been my partner ever since.  People say we have a wonderful life and family.  But I couldn’t have managed any of it without Jack.”

Their married life started in Fort Lee, Va., and then Buccac, France, where Jack was stationed in the Army.  They returned home and Jack went to work in Waikiki for what was then called Matson Hotels, training as an assistant manager at the Moana Surfrider.  Joan modeled to help pay bills and took care of baby Jon.  Eventually, Jack’s work kept him away from his family so much that Joan’s father took notice and offered him a job running the sales department of his factory.
“My father had purchased a garment business about this time, and my mother and I started a little business as well,” Joan recalls. 

With her mother, Jean, Joan started designing new prints for women’s muumuus that hadn’t been seen previously in aloha wear.  It was 1959, and her experimentation with the muumuu started drawing attention.  The Princess Ka'iulani look was about to be born.

“I was pregnant at the time, and I was sick of wearing boxy dresses and muumuus,” she says.  “I wanted to design something that was more form-fitting and flattering to a woman’s figure.  I also didn’t care that much for the loud Hawaiian prints.  So I started taking Mainland fabrics and cuts and adapting them to Hawaiian fashion.”

Designing more feminine cuts with subdued prints and fabrics, Andersen started adding touches of lace, ribbons and ruffles.  She also started carving out slim styles, both long and short, in sharkskin, corduroy, palaka, dotted swiss and textured cottons.

But it’s the lace for which she’s known, lace of all kinds.  Slender bands of it outline the yokes of her muumuus; brief sleeves of heavy lace grace slim columns of cotton in diagonal weaves; and more lace makes a lavish contrast in her deeply textured pique shifts.

“ I started using yokes, mostly lace, to create a picture frame for the face,” she explains.  “I didn’t want to create a design that’s a design in itself.  I wanted something that was elegant and beautiful so it would compliment the face and body.  It’s not the dress that should be noticed – it’s the person.”

But the dresses did get noticed.  The little business tucked in the back corner of her father’s shoe factory suddenly took off:  “It grew pretty fast, largely due to my father’s distribution channels.  With Jack’s help, we already knew which stores and buyers to sell to.”

And sell they did.  By the ‘70s, when aloha fashion started a resurgence, Princess Ka'iulani was in all the major department and designer stores on Oahu, including Liberty House, Carol and Mary, Andrade’s, McInerny and Daisey Pot.

Andersen had created a look that is often referred to in the fashion industry as traditionally elegant, and it became the hallmark of her entire line of clothing.  She started traveling to New York to attend shows and purchase new fabric, although those business trips have slowed in recent years, giving way to trips to “San Francisco and Los Angeles.

“I was doing exclusives for each of the stores we sold to because no one wants to see someone else in the same dress they’re wearing at a party,” she says.  “At one point, I saw seven of my dresses at one party.  Fortunately, they were all different.”

Meanwhile, Princess Ka’iulani wasn’t the only line of the fashionable aloha wear in the islands.  Bete, Malia, Kahala and Nalii were selling well, too.  There was room for everyone – until the late ‘80s.  As so often happens in the fashion industry, someone figured they could take the top-selling fashions, alter the styles slightly, mass produce them and then sell them for a reduced price to undercut the market.  In Hawaii, this meant a lesser quality replica of, say, a Princess Ka'iulani muumuu for half the price it sold for in the finer retail stores.

The impact of this reduced-price strategy was felt by all five aloha designers in town.  In fact, the loss of market share was significant enough that Princess Ka'iulani is the only designer from the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s still in operation today.

“Looking at what’s out there today, most of it is a variation of a Princess Ka'iulani or a Mamo,” Andersen sighs, resigning herself to the nature of the beast.  Mamo Howell is a relatively new but popular aloha wear line.

To many Hawaii residents, the name Princess Ka'iulani represents the highest quality and most elegant aloha wear in the islands.  The price tag reflects it.  A Princess Ka'iulani muumuu runs anywhere from $75 to $300.  Wedding gowns average about $350.

“We could have become a mass producer and gone cheaper, but we chose not to,” she explains.  “We’ve had offers from Japan to buy us out, and we turned that down, too.  This is a family business, and we want to keep it that way.

  “What we do is more of a limited-edition product.  The laces and trim I use are very expensive.  Some of the folds I design I send to New York to have custom-made.  And I spend so much time putting the right fabrics and colors with the right designs.”

This attention to detail has garnered numerous design awards for Andersen, though she’s hesitant to talk about them.  In 1991, she won the Hawaii Visitor’s Bureau Five Kahili award; in 1992, the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Governor’s Fashion Awards show; and in 1994, the Governor’s Cup for Hawaii Apparel Manufacturer of the Year.

Her biggest achievement, however, is clearly her children.  Her three daughters – Judi, Jill and Jaye – have all enjoyed successful modeling careers and are now married with families.  “We owe a lot to my mom and dad,” says Judi “All of us started modeling around the age of 3, and when we got older, we were constantly being taken out of school to do modeling and help with the business. It was a lot of fun and great exposure.” Judi went on to become Miss USA in 1978 and first runner up to Miss Universe!

All four kids graduated from Punahou.

Jon, now a semiprofessional volleyball player who stands 6 feet 6 inches tall and weighs 220 pounds, was involved in the business at an early age as well.

He studied business and textile design and captained San Diego State’s 1979 volleyball team, and after graduation returned home and  started his own line of active sportswear, Riggers.  He opened a retail outlet next door to Princess Ka'iulani  in Kapalama, and his full line of shorts, aloha shirts, oversized T-shirts, sandals and caps have sold extremely well..

Jaye,  an artist, creates her own line of hand painted dresses, T-shirts and ceramics and is the only child not living in Hawaii.

Although Jon, Judi and Jaye have all kept their hands in the family business one way or the other, it is the second daughter, Jill who appears to be shaping up as her mother’s protege in running Princess Ka'iulani.

Jill returned home in 1985 from a  modeling career in New York to work for the family business.  Though not a designer like her mother she had modeled for big named designers like Bill Blass and Geoffrey Beane, and brought a fresh perspective and contemporary fashion experience with her.  Her own wedding, held shortly after she returned, became a professional lesson.

“My mother had always done bridals on a spot basis and was never immersed in it,” Jill says.

“When I came back, the typical wedding in Hawaii was done in solid colors, you know, Mainland-style.  Not that many people were doing Hawaiian style weddings, or really pushing it.

 “When I started working on bridals, I began to use cotton prints and combine them with Hawaiian prints and fabrics, which seemed natural because that’s our look.  It just grew and grew.

 Some of her mother’s early wedding gown creations have stood the test of time and are still favorites, conveying a very Victorian look, with high necks and see-through lace.  But it was Jill who has built the bridal part of the business.

 Jill, who handles sales, says the requests for Hawaiian weddings continue to increase, and she feels more people than ever are wearing aloha attire to work and to social events.

 “Although aloha wear sort of comes and goes in general popularity, there are some people who will wear it no matter what; some who will never wear it, no matter what; and some who will wear it when the occasion calls for it,” she says.  “Right now, I definitely think we’re in an upswing in terms of people wearing it more often for different occasions.

 Her mother agrees, but would like to see aloha fashion more front and center in the stores.  “It seems like the aloha sections are being hidden in the back of the stores, and they should be more toward the front,” Andersen protests.  “I know People want to wear other fashions – I do, too.  Be we should not forget where we’re from.  We should be proud of aloha fashion because it’s so unique and represents the true spirit of the islands.”

 For 37 years, Andersen has done the designing, buying, selling and production for Princess Ka'iulani Fashions.  When she’s in Hawaii, she works on the business in some way from the time she gets up in the morning to the time she goes to bed, talking fabrics over the phone, discussing personnel with Jack or just plain putting her head down and working.

 Her phone at home rings incessantly, and in the office at the boutique, she stops the conversation to handle inquiries from her staff every 15 minutes.  She admits she reaches burnout more often than she used to and would like to slow down.  Perhaps Jill, so hands-on and coming into her own in the business, can provide her with that opportunity.

The questions is: Will Andersen let go?

“Oh, Jill knows the business extremely well,” Joan points out.  “But she’s a carbon copy of me, and I don’t want her to go through what I went through.  I need to slow down, but you know this business is like my child – it’s so hard to let go.”

Joan may never let go completely.  She’s looking forward to focusing her designs more on “fancy dresses,” and has lots of new ideas to try.

 “Now that my family’s grown, Jack and I are not as socially active,” she says.  “My family is, and always has been my first priority.  Jack and I have worked hard to get it together, and we’ve done a good job.

 “I have a great life.  I’ve done almost everything, been everywhere and I have great kids and friends – what more could you want?”