Still Jammin’
The new Surf Line Hawaii shop revives a well-loved name with a bright boutique space & line of redux retro duds.
✏️ NATALIE SCHACK
📸 COURTESY SURF LINE HAWAII
鮮やかな黄色と赤の鮮やかなしぶき、サイケデリックな花柄、大胆な筆使いが特徴のボードショーツは一度見たら忘れられない。ビーチウェアのジェネレーションを定義した1980年代のセンセーション、「ジャムズ・バイ・サーフライン・ハワイ」。今日、新たなショップ「サーフライン・ハワイ」が、まばゆいブティックスペースで蘇える。
Once you’ve seen them, they’re hard to forget: boardshorts with vibrant splashes of electric yellows and reds, psychedelic florals, and bold brushstrokes painted across back pockets. We’re talking about the 1980s sensation Jams by Surf Line Hawaii, a company that defined a generation of beachwear. This company is still making waves, and its latest swell is the playful new Surf Line Hawaii boutique, which comes with a brand new house collection, Surf Line Hawaii Archives, composed entirely of reproduction shirts, separates, and dresses culled from the company’s half-century of designs. The location, which debuted in December 2017 at International Market Place, is a reimagining of the company’s original surf shop, Surf Line Hawaii, which founder Dave Rochlen opened on Kona Street in the 1960s.
In 1964, he debuted the iconic Jams boardshorts. Inspired by a photo he saw in a magazine of a tourist wearing pajamas, Dave bought some bright floral fabric and asked his wife, Keanuenue, to make him a baggy pair of shorts sewn up at the fly, cut off at the knees, and tied with a string. “It was right at the same time as Gidget and the Beach Boys,” remembers Heather Rochlen, Jams World’s executive vice president and Dave Rochlen’s daughter-in-law, of the era. This beach-centric, groovy vibe made it perfect timing for unique psychedelic swimwear that was handmade, the standard at the time in the islands.
The look made waves around the country in the form of a full-blown apparel line dubbed Jams World. “I was a middle school kid in New Jersey, and all the kids were wearing Jams. It was huge, huge, huge,” Heather says. Jams World is the name the company has been using since the 1980s to headline its seasonal collections of locally manufactured, all-new designs. It’s from these archived patterns and fabrics of past seasonal releases that the new Surf Line collection draws from, remaking them into new cuts and silhouettes that reflect the current decade.
The use of the word “world” in the Jam’s World name is a nod to the fact that its limited releases are made with hand-painted art sourced from across the globe. Far from sticking to the typical aloha shirt model of tropical florals and lush ferns, the Jams and Surf Line goods go for vivacious, statement-making creations by artists living beyond Hawaiian shores. The art gets printed onto fabric and is fashioned into button-downs, dresses, and breezy separates.
“Art comes from as far as Japan,” Heather says. “Buttons are hand-painted by an artist in California in his barn. We just went on a trip around the world. We went to Paris, we were in Tokyo to visit our fabric people.”
Logo Tee in White
$50
Cheeters Shorts in Dragonfly
$48
