Some call it kitsch, Gretchen Clarke called it aloha. Clarke, a Chicagoan who helped bring aloha wear to the mainland, eventually running what was once the nation’s largest Hawaiian clothing retail chain, has died in California. Clarke, who was 78, literally fell in love in Hawaii: She met her future husband Waltah in 1953 while taking hula lessons at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. Together, she and Waltah (who spelled his name that way because that’s how locals pronounced it) built an aloha wear retail empire boasting more than 30 stores on the mainland and in Hawaii. In a 2002 interview, Clarke, who designed clothes, talked about transforming the muumuu in the 1960s into “more of a fashion garment — cocktail dresses and resort wear — and not just a baggy dress,” she said.

Read it at the Los Angeles Times.