The Cult of The Island Girls Shirt

The Island Girls Shirt I make for my shirt business SOMETHING FISHY has been a staple for the past nine or ten years.  It's sort of a 'retro' print, with reclining and posing Fifties bathing beauties on a background of blue with big red hibiscus flowers.  It's not a shirt made for quiet men who want to blend into the woodwork.  It's definitely a shirt for a man to be proud to wear and to get comments on.  It has sold very well for me on eBay and this year a strange thing is happening:  I call it The Cult of the Island Girls Shirt.

Back in June, I was delighted to sell my first shirt to a lady in Moscow, Russia (not Idaho).  Yup, the Island Girls shirt.  I marveled at what the shirt would see in  Russia.  Here was a shirt made for wearing to Hawaii and sipping mai tais on the white sand beach under a blazing sun.  Not for sitting in a pea green cafeteria drinking homemade vodka out of Mason jars.  (I don't know!  I've never visited Russia.  But it's my mental picture of how Russians celebrate based on the few Russian novels I've been able to wade through.  Sorry!)  So I bid the poor shirt good-bye, hoping 'my girls' wouldn't freeze and went on with my sewing. 

The shirt, you see, has five fetching beauties in various retro bathing suits, ranging from a strapless to a modest two piece to my favorite (which doesn't show up in the the photo, unfortunately) a red and white halter with white flower blossoms on them.  It reminds me of a suit that I had back in 1978 that was very like that suit that I wore on my very first trip to Hawaii.... oh sorry!  I digress.  Anyway, it's not the type of clothing you would wear if you were packing to go to Russia, you see.  Those swimsuits would probably be the last article of clothes you'd pack to take there.  (Now let me... where's my fur coat and those fleece lined boots?)

Anyway, a month later, in June, darned if I didn't sell the exact same shirt to a fellow in Moscow.  I checked the name, no different fellow.  Different address.  I wondered if old Dimitri had met Olga in some steam filled bar and they'd exchanged information about my Island Girls shirt and he'd found me on eBay.  I could dream!  But I sewed up another one and sent those girls on out to Moscow to warm some chilly fellow's day.

I've been making this shirt, like I said, for ten years now.  At times, the print just lagged in sales.  It was times like those that I wondered if I shouldn't turn the rest of my Island Girl stash into tablecloths, retro for the Fifties kitchens, but just about the time I'd start pondering such a thought, sales would flare up, some new men would discover "The Girls" and I'd sew through what I had and order another bolt.  By the beginning of this year, I had successfully clothed most of my steady customers in Island Girls shirts.  (Look, I have very flashy customers who don't mind wearing scantily clad ladies on their backs.)  Back in 2002, I even made one for the director of our Harley club.  Instead of the requisite black leather all the bikers wore for the meetings, Mel would show up with his Island Girls shirt on and a big grin, trying to start a whole new look.  (It never quite worked for the rest of the bikers.)

Anyway, a week after the second Island Girls shirt was sold to Moscow, a man with a very Russian-y sounding name, bought one and had me send it to  Charleston, South Carolina.  I wondered if he too, might have known  ol' Dimitri and Olga in Moscow and told him when he was visiting Charleston to get Nancy to send him a shirt.  I did, of course.  I also wondered if perhaps I wasn't clothing some parts of the Russian mafia.  Who would think of looking at these folks clad in the retro Hawaiian print?  They certainly wouldn't look ominous.

So then, in August, I sent one of these shirts out to a fellow in the South of France.  And on October 15, one was ordered by a man in a little village in Greece.  At least those girls would get to see the sun now and then!  But a week later, on October 15, another Russian man Sergei (also from Moscow, mind you) ordered an Island Girls.  And a week later, a fellow ordered one from Copenhagen.    As I stuffed these last two shirts into their mailing envelopes, I told the girls not to despair.  I hoped they wouldn't freeze too bad.  I told them to keep smiling and cheer up the fellows who would be warmed by the girls' sunny dispositions.  But it does seem a cruel thing, to send those little beauties into the cold Northern winter. 

Do you think those folks will ever travel to a warm sunny climate and take the girls along to wear?  Or will they be destined to a life spent under sweaters and coats, perhaps layered over thermal underwear when their owner wants to show them off?  Seems sort of cruel to me.  But then.... I've got to order another bolt of Island Girls.  When she's Hot she's Hot!  And those Girls are burning bright right now.