RJC Hawaii
Aloha shirts cut and sewn in the Hawaiian Islands since 1953.
🇺🇸 Made in USA
Our assessment
Company details
Where RJC Hawaii products are made
RJC cuts and sews in the islands rather than importing finished goods and labelling them Hawaiian. The company describes the choice as a commitment made to the people of the islands — to produce aloha apparel for locals and visitors alike.
The fabrics are the product. RJC develops its own island-inspired prints rather than buying open-line cloth, which is what separates a Hawaiian shirt with a design history from a novelty print run off anywhere.
RJC has been family owned and operated since 1953, through the near-total offshoring of American apparel. The garment industry Robert Clancey first joined in Southern California is essentially gone; his company in Honolulu is not.
The 1953 founding, the family ownership and the statement that all aloha apparel is manufactured in the Hawaiian Islands are published by Robert J. Clancey Ltd on rjchawaii.com.
The story
The man behind RJC was from Boston, and he was cold. Robert J. Clancey had served in the Navy in southern Italy during the Second World War, come home to Massachusetts, decided the weather was intolerable, and moved to Los Angeles — where he found work in the necktie business and learned the garment trade during its Southern California boom.
Walking the Los Angeles docks one day he read a sign: twenty dollars a person, fifty dollars a car, to Honolulu. He had stopped in Hawaii on a Navy ship during the war and loved it. He boarded the Matson liner with a few hundred dollars and a red convertible.
What followed was not a straight line. He worked for a wholesale distributor, married, and then discovered his employer was going to prison for embezzlement. He sold his wife’s car to buy a ticket back to Los Angeles and find lines to represent. Back in Honolulu he sold women’s foundation garments out of a rented office on Young Street, built a wholesale warehouse, and began representing a local Hawaiian wear manufacturer — until the owner handed the business to his son and Robert was fired. He was, by the company’s own account, devastated. Then the fabric suppliers who knew him offered him credit to buy cloth and start his own line. That was 1953, and that line became RJC.
Why they matter
The aloha shirt is one of the few genuinely American garment traditions, and it has been almost entirely offshored. Most of what is sold to visitors in Waikiki is made overseas. A shirt actually cut and sewn in the islands is now the exception, and RJC is one of the companies keeping that tradition connected to the place it came from.
RJC has held that position for more than seventy years without becoming a museum piece. The company still develops its own prints and still sells to locals as well as tourists — which is the harder test, because residents know the difference and buy accordingly.
There is also something worth noticing in how RJC started. Robert Clancey got his second chance because fabric suppliers who had watched him work extended him credit. That is what a manufacturing community looks like, and it is what disappears when an industry leaves.
Shop RJC Hawaii products
Browse RJC Hawaii aloha shirts and island apparel stocked on the Buy American Campaign store.
Frequently asked questions
Are RJC shirts made in Hawaii?
Yes. Robert J. Clancey Ltd states on its own website that it continues to manufacture all of its aloha apparel in the Hawaiian Islands.
Where is RJC Hawaii located?
Honolulu, Hawaii, where the company has been since Robert J. Clancey founded it in 1953.
Who owns RJC Hawaii?
It remains family owned and operated, as it has been since 1953.
What fabrics does RJC use?
Exclusive island-inspired prints in cool cotton and washable 100% rayon, developed by the company rather than bought as open-line cloth.