I already told you about that famous Hawaii shirt I bought in Hawaii in March 1993, the one from the Tom Selleck Collection. Back in Munich, this became my newest fashion trend. Maybe “trend” is a bit optimistic, because I was actually the only person following it, but every great movement has to start with one brave pioneer.
In my case: one man, one accountancy office, and three very loud Hawaiian shirts.
Aloha!
Of course, I did not buy only one Hawaii shirt from the Tom Selleck collection. That would have been too modest, too reasonable, too German. No, I bought three. Each one cost 75 US dollars, which was a little fortune at that time. But once such an investment was made, it had to be used. You cannot spend 225 dollars on tropical identity and then hide it in the wardrobe.
So I wore them.
Even at work.
And yes, I was reminded that I worked in a law office, not in a travel agency. But technically, I did not work for the law department downstairs. I worked one floor up in the tax consultancy office, which for the people downstairs probably felt like a leprosy station anyway. The lawyers were the serious people. We upstairs were surrounded by numbers, files, tax problems, coffee cups, and a certain lack of glamour. Nobody really cared too much how we appeared in the office. Jeans were allowed, sneakers were allowed, and as long as one wore at least something that could be called a shirt, civilisation was still intact.
So why not a Hawaiian shirt?
Why not three?
Why not bring a little Aloha into Munich taxation?
My boss, a lawyer himself, once looked at me and said the unforgettable sentence:
“There are Hawaiian shirts, and there are Hawaiian shirts, but yours are Hawaiian shirts.”
That was not criticism. That was poetry. That was approval from the highest authority. It meant my shirts were not ordinary summer shirts. They were exceptional. They had personality. They entered the room before I did and probably needed their own business cards.
From that moment on, I understood: the Hawaiian shirts were officially accepted in the company.
Maybe not written in the office rules, but spiritually approved.
During winter, I did not wear them. Even I knew there are limits. A Hawaiian shirt in a Munich winter looks confused, almost depressed, as if it is asking itself: “What happened? Yesterday I was in Honolulu, and now I am near a radiator.”
But once spring came and the days became a little warmer in March, they celebrated their comeback. Not necessarily real warmth, of course. German March warmth means you can maybe open your jacket for five minutes without risking your life. But for me, that was already enough.
The shirts came back.
And with them came colour, sunshine, and the dangerous feeling that the tax consultancy department might suddenly start serving cocktails.
Sometimes, when I wore normal clothes, even clients seemed to miss something. They looked at me almost sadly, as if the sunny feeling had disappeared from the room.
Where was the colour?
Where was the tropical optimism?
Where was the man who looked like he could discuss income tax and then recommend a beach on Maui?
That was when I knew I had become more than an employee.
I had become a climate condition.
From Hawaii Shirts to Tahiti Shirts
But my tropical office career did not stop with Hawaii.
Later came the Tahiti shirts.
And where did I buy Tahiti shirts?
In Tahiti, of course.
Where else? It would have been very disappointing to buy them in Munich at a department store between winter jackets and socks. No, a real Tahiti shirt had to come from Tahiti. It needed the correct origin, the correct sunlight, and probably a little bit of lagoon air still trapped in the fabric.
The Tahiti shirts were different from the Hawaiian ones. They had style. They were not just colourful shirts for tourists who wanted to look like they had escaped from a postcard. In French Polynesia, these shirts were part of everyday elegance. They were worn by officials, by mayors, by people in parliament, and even by priests.
That impressed me deeply.
Imagine that.
A shirt that I could wear in my Munich office and say with full seriousness: “This is not casual clothing. This is almost parliamentary dress.”
That was not dressing down.
That was an upgrade.
My office atmosphere had reached a new level.
With the Hawaiian shirts, I was maybe the man who looked like he had walked out of Magnum, P.I. after losing the Ferrari. But with the Tahiti shirts, I had international authority. If a mayor in French Polynesia could wear such a shirt officially, then surely I could wear one in a German tax department while checking documents and drinking bad office coffee.
I should maybe have explained this to the lawyers downstairs.
“This is not a holiday shirt. This is administrative Pacific elegance.”
I am not sure they would have understood, but I would have enjoyed saying it.
My One-Man Fashion Revolution
Looking back, I think those shirts were more than just clothes.
They were my way of being different. My own lifestyle. A small rebellion against office norms, grey suits, and the idea that work has to look serious in order to be serious.
I loved colourful clothing. Maybe this love came from my childhood. After my father and my grandmother died in the late seventies, my mother wore black for more than two years because of mourning. I was still a little boy, and for me those two years felt like an eternity. Black was everywhere. Not just as a colour, but as a mood.
Maybe that is why, later in life, I was so attracted to colour.
Colour felt like freedom.
Colour felt like sunlight.
Colour felt like refusing to disappear into sadness or grey routine.
So when I wore my Hawaiian shirts, and later my Tahiti shirts, it was not only because I liked them. It was also a way of saying: I am here. I have my own taste. I have my own memories. I have seen places where life looked different, warmer, more relaxed, and more colourful.
And I wanted to carry a little bit of that with me.
Even into a Munich office.Especially into a Munich office.
Hawaii-Shirt-Andy
Of course, with such dedication, a nickname had to come sooner or later.
And it came.
Hawaii-Shirt-Andy.
I liked it.
There are worse nicknames. Nobody called me “The Tax Phantom” or “The Human Calculator.” Hawaii-Shirt-Andy had sunshine. It had humour. It had a bit of madness. And it was true.
I had started a new fashion trend, even if I remained the only participant. But maybe that made it even better. It was exclusive. A private movement. A tropical one-man revolution between tax files, office chairs, and German bureaucracy.
And when the Tahiti shirts later joined the collection, the revolution became even more refined.
Hawaii was the beginning.
Tahiti was the upgrade.
The lawyers downstairs may have had their suits and serious faces, but upstairs in the tax consultancy department, there was at least one man carrying the Pacific on his shoulders.
And yes, that man was me.
Hawaii-Shirt-Andy.
Later also Tahiti Shirt Andi, but somehow the first nickname stayed.
Aloha!
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