How to properly clean and maintain such as your Hawaiian shirt or Hawaiian muumuu and just about all other clothing purchased from the Wave Shoppe. With the exception of our lava lava's, every garment we sell has a Care tag that lists the best non-destructive care instructions. You may also utilize the suggestions below to clean and care for your Hawaiian clothing.
Cotton Shirts and Dresses
- Machine wash cold or warm, preferably on gentile cycle, but no more than normal cycle. Make sure you do not use any detergent that contains bleach.
- Tumble dry low, medium or air dry.
- Optional: Iron on low heat to maintain fabric luster.
- Comment: To preserve the colors in a cotton shirt we do not recommend high drying temperatures, ironing keeps shirts looking like new.
Rayon Shirts and Dresses
- Machine wash cold, gentile cycle. Do not use any detergent that contains bleach or strong cleaning agents.
- Tumble dry low, or air dry.
- Iron the shirt on very low heat to maintain sheen and remove any small wrinkles.
- Optional: You may hand wash a rayon shirt and air dry it (that's how we do it).
- Optional: Dry cleaning is optional, please read about dry cleaning below.
PolyCotton Shirts
- Machine wash cold or warm, normal cycle. Make sure you do not use any detergent that contains bleach.
- Tumble dry low, medium or air dry.
- Optional: Iron on low heat to maintain fabric luster.
- Comment: PolyCotton is durable and normally colorfast, but to preserve the colors we do not recommend the use of any strong laundry detergents or high drying temperatures. If you are uncertain about your detergent strength you can always hand wash your shirt.
Cotton Rayon Blends
- Machine wash cold, gentile cycle. Do not use any detergent that contains bleach or strong cleaning agents.
- Tumble dry low, or air dry.
- Iron the shirt on very low heat to maintain sheen and remove any small wrinkles.
- Optional: You may hand wash a blended rayon shirt and air dry it (that's how we do it).
- Optional: Dry cleaning is optional, please read about dry cleaning below.
Rayon Sarongs
- Rayon sarongs are generally easy to care for. We highly recommend that you hand wash your sarongs to preserve the beautiful colors, but you may also machine wash cold on delicate cycle if hand washing is not feasible.
Hawaiian Shirts with Embroidery
- Recommended: Dry cleaning is recommended to prevent fraying and damage to the embroidery stitching.
- Optional: Machine wash cold on delicate cycle, do not use any detergent that contains bleach.
- Optional: If you elected to machine or hand wash, please tumble dry low or air dry.
- Comment: We do not recommend ironing the actual embroidery work because it will damage the stitching.
A few words on Dry Cleaning
Please make sure you use a reputable dry cleaner that will test a section that is not visible prior to dry cleaning. We do as much testing as we can to insure the colorfastness of the fabrics that we utilize, but we have no control over the chemicals and solvents that a dry cleaner would use. Harsh solvents can destroy the rich colors of a Hawaiian shirt, do your homework and your Hawaiian shirt will retain it's vivid colors for years to come.
Ironing Wave Shoppe Hawaiian Shirts
Our construction methods are at the top of the industry standards, but you need to know that we use fusible interfacing in the construction of all of our Hawaiian shirts. Our interfacing is applied with a hot press that melts the bonding agent to the fabric, fused interfacing acts as a stiffener and really helps retain the clean lines and shapes of the shirt openings such as button lines, sleeve, collar and pocket openings.
It is important that you do not use excessive heat around the shirt collars or openings where the buttons are. We have not experienced any problems to date, but it is possible to overheat the interfacing to a point that causes it to separate from the fabric. It probably would not cause a lot of harm, but overtime, you could see a loss of shape and retention around the openings in your Hawaiian shirt.
Hawaiian Print Dresses
Some of our authentic Hawaiian dresses and select automotive themed mens Hawaiian shirts are made in Hawaii by independent garment manufacturers, please refer to the individual manufacturers Care Instructions on the garments label.