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.