Heady Versions

Reyn Spooner’s most beloved tradition. In 1983, Tim McCullough noticed men had no festive aloha wear at a holiday conference and designed the first Hawaiian Christmas shirt. It became an annual, limited-edition collectible — a new print every year that fans collect like stamps, each tagged “Limited Issue.” Early designs used traditional Christmas borders; the “Mele Kalikimaka” greeting (Hawaiian for “Merry Christmas”) has been worked into the prints since 1992, often hidden treasure-hunt style alongside a recurring Christmas nēnē goose. The 2023 release marked the line’s 40th anniversary.

Alfred Shaheen was Hawaii’s most influential textile printer and garment manufacturer of the 1950s–60s, running the islands’ most complete in-house printing operation. In the early 1960s Reyn McCullough persuaded Shaheen — who rarely licensed his exclusive South-Pacific prints — to let Reyn Spooner use them, impressed by Reyn’s quality. The “Alfred Shaheen by Reyn Spooner” line reinterprets those original 1950s–60s Shaheen textile designs on Reyn Spooner shirts (this co-brand label reads “Textile Design Copyrighted”).

Dietrich Varez (d. 2018) was a self-taught Big Island printmaker known for bold linocut / block prints of Hawaiian myth, legend, and daily life. His roughly three-decade partnership with Reyn Spooner turned that folk-art style into collectible aloha shirts — prints like Sashimi Maru, Manō, Knee Body Boogie, and Pua‘a — and continued with archival releases after his passing. The label carries his own hand-lettered signature.

Naoki Hayashi is a Hawaii-based artist who has practiced gyotaku — the centuries-old Japanese art of printing directly from a real fish onto paper — since age 11. A diver and fisherman, he uses non-toxic acrylics and prints only from fish that will be eaten. The partnership goes back decades: this vintage “Gyotaku by Naoki for Reyn Spooner” label (60/40 cotton-poly, “Designed in Hawaii, Tailored in Korea,” with the artist’s red chop seal) has an actual fish print woven into the tag. Reyn Spooner revived the line again in 2026 on Spooner Kloth — designs such as Oio (Hawaiian bonefish), Mahi, Sailfish, Marlin, and Hanauma Bay — with live fish-printing demos at the Ala Moana store.

Reyn Spooner has also worked with Vans (1984), Hawaii artist Eddy Y. (1996), Opening Ceremony (2011), The Beach Boys, and runs a long-standing Major League Baseball series. One to keep straight: the celebrated John Severson surf-art aloha shirts — from the founder of Surfer magazine — are a Kahala collaboration, not Reyn Spooner (see below).

John Severson (1933–2017) was a legendary surf artist, filmmaker, and the founder of Surfer magazine. Beginning in the 1990s, his paintings — from soft moonlit lineups to bold, barreling swells — began appearing on Kahala aloha shirts, and the partnership continues with his wife Louise and daughter Anna helping select designs (recent prints include Makaha Set). The woven label carries his red-script signature over a surfer-on-the-beach scene. This is the collaboration people often misattribute to Reyn Spooner — it’s Kahala’s.

Avi Kiriaty (b. Israel, 1957) grew up captivated by Polynesia through the paintings of Paul Gauguin and the writings of Pierre Loti. He moved to Hawai‘i in 1979, settling first on Kaua‘i and later on the Big Island — farming and fishing on the Hāmākua coast and painting in the Puna rainforest — before basing himself on Maui. Working in oils, linoleum block prints, sculpture, and serigraphy, he built a style critics tie to Gauguin and muralist Jean Charlot: “passionate primitivism,” bold outlines, and saturated pinks, greens, and blues.

His subjects — fishermen hauling nets, canoe paddlers, surfers, and kāne and wāhine at work pounding poi or stringing lei — made him a natural fit for Kahala. Through roughly 2002, the Avi Collection (also sold as the Avi Kiriaty Artist Series) translated those paintings into aloha shirts, including reverse-print versions, and it remains one of Kahala’s most collectible and recognizable artist lines. His folk-art figuration helped define the brand’s 1990s identity as an art-forward maker rather than just a floral-shirt label. The same tag anchors the ~1990s–2002 slot in the timeline above.