long dress
Simple a line dress built for your endless summer.
the form
The long dress is a dead simple a-line maxi dress made in mid weight cotton twill. But of course getting a simple thing right is often harder than it looks and this form went through several rounds of development to eliminate all unnecessary details like darts and top stitching so it could be an ideal canvas for our work.
This well balanced, modest dress is an almost perfect distillation of the Mu’umu’u spirit - fun, comfortable, simple, with an elegant bateau neckline. The full length, unbroken expanse allows our prints to shine. Inspired by classic 1960 and 1970s dresses, this dress easily moves between casual settings and work without skipping a beat.
Malia of Honolulu Press Photo c.1970s
in the details
Self faced sewn down linings at the neckline are a heirloom construction detail that guarantees no jarring white lining showing at the seams. As a more expensive construction decision, they also help to make this dress hard wearing and last longer.
in the wild
fabric & manufacture
For this form we chose a mid weight BCI* cotton twill that is substantial and opaque. This fiber allows the garment to breathe and cotton is a long lasting, hard wearing staple. It biodegrades and is compostable as well. The fabric is printed in Italy using azo free pigment ink.
*BCI is the Better Cotton Initiative which tracks environmental sustainability and ethical labor practices.
We cut and sew each dress in our barn studio in Upstate NY. We support a MTO (made to order) and limited batch production model. This means that we make each item as it is ordered and cut down on inventory waste.
our prints
Click on any print to read the whole print story.
*can’t find the dress you want in the print you want? Contact us for a special order.
some history.
Around the 1820s missionaries popularized western dress in Hawaii (and greater Polynesia). This shift was bound up with some awful things (colonization…body shame…). However lemons can make lemonade and for us that lemonade is this durable continuum of a dress called Mu’umu’u - a comfortable, unfitted dress often in a bright print with unusual details like back pleating, bib yokes, ruffles, frog clasps, nehru collars, kimono sleeves. These dresses trace their lineage to the Mother Hubbard, a frumpy, bib fronted, full length house dress. Nowadays we experience this form mainly as a nightgown.
During the 1800s the Hubbard form split into two distinct but related entities in Hawai’i. The Holoku—a formal dress with a train (translates as “Go, stop.” meaning it was easy to move in). And the mu’ mu’u—a utility garment to be worn informally (translates as “ To cut off.” meaning it was shortened and had no sleeves so it could be worn as an undergarment). By 1870 the Holoku had evolved so far from its simple Mother Hubbard beginnings, it was considered to be Hawaiian dress.
In the 1890s the Holoku took two forms—a “traditional” Holoku that retained the width, bib, and puff sleeve. And the “fashion” Holoku that was more fitted and incorporated all kinds of influences germane to the fashion of the day along with increasingly longer trains.
In 1949 the Hawaiian garment industry, flush with the success of the Aloha shirt, introduced the Holomu’u (translates as “Go, cut off.” easy to wear and without a train) - a day dress that was fashionable, fitted, ruffled and exportable. This enabled the Holoku to retain its more formal status and its ability to signal “Hawaiianess.”
Whether it’s called a Holoku, a Mu’umu’u or a Holomu’u we see these as a single, inclusive form.
For more read: A Brief History of the Design Evolution of the Hawaiian Holoku and Designs of Hawaiian Wear: an Evolution in History