The 14 Best Hawaiian Shirts to Wear With Absolutely Everything This Summer (2024)

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The Hawaiian shirt has a long, sometimes-checkered history wrapped up in cultural interchange, colonial pain, long artistic traditions, and so much more. It's one of those garments you could write a whole book about, if you were so inclined—there's just that much to explore. I'd recommend you look into the longer story, because it's a genuinely fascinating one. But I'd also venture to guess you're here not for a history lesson but for some shopping advice. That's fine, too! So let's focus less on the academics and more on what you want to know about what a Hawaiian shirt—or aloha shirt, depending on your preferred terminology—means for your wardrobe this summer.

Hawaiian shirts are cool. Yes, they are in style. No, you do not need to look and behave like your drunkest uncle at the family BBQ to wear one. Because despite their "zinc oxide-covered tourist with a camera slung around his neck" connotations from decades past, Hawaiian shirts came roaring back onto the scene with a vengeance a few years ago and they're still going strong.

The most outlandish designs have been replaced by ones more subtle, more intricate, and more wearable than their predecessors. The fits haven't been trimmed down to #menswear slimness, but the best Hawaiian shirts on the market right now flutter in the breeze with a certain aplomb instead of billowing out like a parachute. They're light. They're interesting. And, yeah, they're cool. In fact, the right Hawaiian shirt is the answer to at least 53 percent of your summer style queries.

Oh, and if you're wondering what exactly makes a shirt a Hawaiian shirt, well, the answer to that one is a bit more amorphous. There's a lot of "I'll know it when I see it" that goes into the calculations. But broadly, it should feature an open—or camp, or Cuban; again with the terminology—collar, plus a pattern or print inspired by the Hawaiian landscape or culture. If you see Japanese motifs arise, that's fair game too, thanks to that cultural interplay I was talking about earlier. And, of course, flowers and leaves are a pretty sure bet. Still wondering what to look for? Just keep scrolling for stylish examples. Then get shopping.

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