Kalākua Kaheiheimālie actually started the muʻ umuʻ u trend.
By the time the missionaries got here on 4 April 1820, Hawaiian women were very familiar with European clothing and fashion. Remember, Europeans had been coming in increasing numbers since 1778, so we’d been familiar with Western garments for over 40 years. They were nothing new. The “upper crust” already were using quantities of imported fabrics in making pāʻ ū and malo because they were status symbols, much like high-end import goods today.
Hawaiian people already had been wearing European clothing, occasionally as full suits, more often individual pieces as fashion accessories, for decades. Kamehameha, himself, often dressed in European clothing.
Despite the “common wisdom,” I sincerely doubt that the missionary wives were the first European women that Hawaiians met in person, though I am sure that coming in such a large group as they did, and with the intent of staying, they were a great curiosity.
Women at sea was not the rarity the common English narrative would have us believe. Most of us have heard the stories of women who disguised themselves as men and went to sea. There also were many women who sailed as women, to the extent of captaining their own ships, though that was more common in Asia than in Europe.
A number of ship captains, both merchants and whalers, sailed with their families on-board. A captains wife often trained in navigation. Many kept the ship’s financial records, acting as purser and chief steward.
In 1846 a smallpox epidemic broke out aboard the whaler Powhaton, out of Martha’s Vinyard. Caroline Mayhew, wife of Captain William Mayhew, knew navigation and practical medicine. She took over as captain and cared for her husband and those crew who were ill, saving their lives.
Also, since the first European ships came to replenished their water barrels in our rivers and streams, Hawaiian men had been working on sailing ships – they were considered some of the world’s best sailors and highly desired – for decades – so they were quite familiar with fashions around the world. I’m sure more than a few of them brought home fabric and garments as gifts for nā wāhine in their ʻ ohana.
In this watercolor, we see a fashion-forward aliʻ i wahine (noblewoman) sitting for a portrait wearing her European style blouse with a traditional pāʻ ū (skirt). We know her high rank by the lei niho palaoa (carved whale-tooth necklace) she wears. Louis Choris painted this in 1816, four years before the American missionaries arrived.
1816 watercolor by Louis Choris
We can see that Hawaiian women already were interested in world fashion well before the missionaries arrived. The world had changed, and artists such as Choris were having a hard time finding the untouched Hawaiʻ i of the past.
watercolor by Clarissa Chapman Armstrong.
This may be the first holokū made in Hawaiʻ i.
Her necklace is a lei hala, fashioned from the keys of the hala (pandanus) tree.
In her hair is a large comb, possibly of shell or ivory.
After the death of Kamehameha, Kalākua later married Ulumāheihei Hoapili.
When this whole batch of foreign women showed up, they were quite the curiosity. Kalākua knew that people would be intrigued with them.
She wanted to be in the lead of the fashion trends and made a point of greeting them as soon as possible. Immediately, she had the missionary women make her a gown. To be sure to could be done, she brought her own cloth. she then arranged to have all of the women sit and sew her new gown. It would take all of them, as she wanted it complete so that she could wear it when she disembarked from their ship. This was a huge status and fashion coup for her.
Lucy Thurston wrote:
“Kalākua brought a web of white cambric to have a dress made for herself in the fashion of our ladies, and was very particular in her wish to have it finished while sailing along the western side of the island, before reaching the king.”
“Monday morning April 3d (1820,) the first sewing circle was formed that the sun ever looked down upon in the Hawaiian realm. Kalākua was directress. She requested all the seven white ladies to take seats with them on mats, on the deck of the Thaddeus.”
It would be comparable to a former US president’s wife going on board a visiting ship from China and coming off wearing a custom gown in Chinese silk. All of a sudden, that garment and fabric is all the rage and all the upper class want them.
I think it was a masterstroke of fashion diplomacy. This was the year after her husband, Kamehameha Paiʻ ea had died. The various chiefs were jockeying and re-establishing status and alliances, and the same was happening among the many wives Kamehameha had left behind. In one move Kalākua established that she could make the missionary women work for her, that she was a trendsetter, and placed herself in a powerful position of diplomatic friendship with the missionary wives. By bringing her own fabric, she assured that none could think she was impressed by trade cloth and trinkets handed out. She needed no handouts. She would allow them to do her bidding.
Her own experience living in the highest circles of political power had taught her how and with whom to make alliances. As Kamehameha had used relationships with newcomers to up his own political game in his rise to power, developing a relationship with these newcomers gave her greater negotiating strength with Kaʻ ahumanu, the most powerful of Kamehameha’s wives, in establishing herself in the hierarchy of the new political paradigm.
On the missionary side, the women immediately took the opportunity to use teaching sewing these new garments as a ministry. Women who converted to Christianity did, indeed, adopt the holokū for daily wear, but it took over a decade for other women to follow the trend in daily wear. It was almost 1840 before women in general wore the garment. Like other fashion trends around the world, the early adopters tended to be the more affluent / higher socially placed, and the more urban dwelling people. Outlying areas tend to be more conservative regarding change.
Even at that late date, Clarissa Chapman Armstrong who sailed for Hawaiʻ i in 1831 and taught literacy and Bible study classes for women for the next couple of decades (interspersed with a trip to the Marquesas) wrote that “Week after week passes and we see nothing but naked, filthy, wicked heathen with souls as dark as the tabernacles which they inhabit.”
If the missionary women had ever truly attempted to cover the bodies of Hawaiian women to keep the pure eyes of their missionary men from being tempted by lusts of the flesh, they failed miserably.
What succeeded in clothing both Hawaiian women and men was fashion’s fancy and sartorial aspiration.
The days of Hawaiian women being content with a simple wrap skirt and shawl were gone forever.
Portrait of a woman from the Hawaiian Islands, wearing a cloth wrap skirt, a pair of earrings, a whale tooth shaped necklace, and her hair short with a section of hair limed at the front.
1822 lithograph, brown and yellow tone with additional red tone.
Note the variety of clothing styles, from Hawaiian to European.
The holokū, so named due to its ability to make the wearer appear “evenly plump, stout, symmetrical,” was not worn alone. Under it, a loose-fitting shift absorbed perspiration and gave some shape and body to the garment. Cut to a similar pattern as the holokū, this shift had shortened sleeves and no train or trailing hem. Thus it was named the mu‘umu‘u (cut off / amputated). As time went on the muʻ umuʻ u also became daywear instead of just an undergarment.
I think the old narrative of missionary women covering the Hawaiian women to hide them from their men is giving too much power to the male gaze. It really disenfranchises Hawaiian women who had a great deal of agency prior to westernization/colonization. If my own relatives are any example, I really doubt that anyone has ever been able to force Hawaiian women to wear something they didn’t want to.
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Resources
Newspapers
Ka Elele, 26 Aug 1848
Ka Hae Hawai‘i, 19 Dec 1856
Ka Hae Hawai‘i, 1 Jul 1857
Ka Hae Hawai‘i, 2 May 1860
Ka Hae Hawai‘i, 10 Oct 1860
Ka Hoku o ka Pakipika, 28 Nov 1861
Ke Kumu Hawai‘i, 1 Feb 1837
Nupepa Kuokoa, 12 Jul 1862
Nupepa Kuokoa, 22 Jul 1865
Nupepa Kuokoa, 9 Jun 1866
Nupepa Kuokoa, 23 Feb 1867
Manuscripts
Arthur, Linda Boynton; Fossilized Fashion in Hawai‘i; Washington State University
Books
Grimshaw, Patricia; New England Missionary Wives, Hawaiian Women, and the “Cult of True Womanhood”; University of Hawai‘i at Manoa.
Robert, Dana Lee; American Women in Mission: A Social History of Their Thought and Practice; Mercer University Press.