A visit to The Kahala Mandarin, a very nice hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii in the South Pacific.

Address: 5000 Kahala Ave, Honolulu, HI 96816
Latitude and longitude coordinates are: 21.315603, -157.858093.

I was delighted to find this exhibit of a 100 year old or more outfit from old Hawai’i. It is an outfit made entirely from bird feathers. The colors of red and yellow could only be worn by royalty called the Alii’.
According to the exhibit documentation this hat and cape were made from about 10,000 bird feathers.

The traditional set including hat, cape, also included two tools with special meaning. The Alii were like Gods and they possessed the power of life or death over a commoner. If a commoner broke one of the Hawaiian Laws or Cultural Traditions called Taboos in Hawaii the penalty could be death or life. So the Alii carried these two tools on formal occasions to characterize or illustrate their power. The twin tools were a wooden club, studded with sharks teeth, which represented the power of death (shark tooth club) and crop harvesting tool, which represented life.


Close up shots of the sharks tooth club

The feather Hat...

And side view of the 10,000 bird feather cape...

Front view...

It’s was a nice cultural exhibit.

All pictures taken but me with I-Phone camera.

✍️ written by Shortsegments