San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles
Hawai’i’s Alfred Shaheen: Fabric to Fashion
Traveling Exhibition
San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles
May 18, 2010 to August 8, 2010
Arab American National Museum
October 7, 2010 to March 13, 2011
Washington State University
April 7, 2011 to May 3, 2011
Maui Arts & Cultural Center
September 4, 2011 to October 29, 2011
Hawai’i’s Alfred Shaheen: Fabric to Fashion, a major traveling retrospective of Hawaiian textiles and aloha wear manufactured by Alfred Shaheen on the island of O’ahu over a 40-year period, was co-curated by the SJMQ&T Curator Deborah Corsini and Hawaiian textile scholar Dr. Linda Arthur. The exhibit featured 100+ objects of stunning yardage and garments representing the textile designs Shaheen produced and key examples of the garments that visually conjure Hawai’i’s complex cultural history. The exhibit filled three Museum galleries.
Shaheen mined the visual iconography of Hawai’i’s multi-ethnic community to create a new design aesthetic. Shaheen wed technological innovation to socially responsible business practices in the service of revitalizing Pacific Island/Asian textile traditions to forge a fusion fashion design aesthetic now recognized worldwide as a visual marker–not only of a transnational Hawaiian culture–but of a West Coast American lifestyle that is informal, environmentally aware, and multi-cultural.
Exhibit Catalogue
