Hawaiian shirts were popular long before Elvis Presley wore a red aloha shirt on the album cover for the "Blue Hawaii" soundtrack in 1961.

In fact, the modern Hawaiian shirt came about in the early 1930s. A Chinese merchant named Ellery Chun of King-Smith Clothiers and Dry Goods, owned a store in Waikiki. Ellery started to sew brightly colored  aloha shirts for tourists fashioned from old kimono fabrics he had leftover in stock. The Honolulu Advertiser newspaper was quick to coin them by the term 'Aloha shirt'  and Ellery trademarked the name.

The first advertisement in the Honolulu Advertiser for Chun's Hawaiian shirts was published in June 1935. Local residents, especially those in the surfing community as well as tourists descended on Chun's store and bought every shirt he had. Within just a few years, major designer labels sprung up all over Hawaii and began manufacturing and selling Aloha shirts en masse. Retail chains in Hawaii, even mass produced aloha shirt designs to use as their employee uniforms.

After World War II, many servicemen and servicewomen returned to the United States from Asia and the Pacific islands with aloha shirts that had been made in Hawaii since the 1930s. Then as tourists started  flocking to Hawaii  post WW2 in the 1950s,  the tropical-print shirts for men and sundresses for women became standard souvenirs for travelers.