For more than 25 years, Puka Prints has been breathing life into local fabrics.
Images by John Hook
At the industrial Puka Prints warehouse in Kalihi, it takes two people to screenprint the fabric unfurled on two 30-yard tables — one employee on each side, taking turns pulling a wide, wood-handled squeegee across fine silk stretched onto a 24-inch-wide frame. Back and forth, back and forth, until the ink is spread smoothly enough to create the desired print — in this case, pūhala atop an ʻilima-orange cotton fabric for The Hawaiian Force, a Hilo-based aloha wear brand. Then they move two steps down, leaving the space of a frame between the wet ink and where they place it down again, repeating the process until they reach the end of the table.
Screenprinting is a matter of hurry up and wait. After the first pass down the 60 yards of fabric, which takes about an hour, the team waits 10 minutes for it to dry before starting another pass to fill in the blanks. “A lot of things we do is kinda old school,” says owner Chris Yokogawa at his onsite office, where his two dogs rest in a small pen. Customers choose the color for their print from a physical book of fabric swatches, after which an employee with decades of experience carefully mixes ink from various buckets into a perfect match. For the custom designs, digital files are sent to a company in Los Angeles that burns film positives on transparencies, which Puka Prints then uses to make large wood-framed silk screens. The films and screens are stored indefinitely at the warehouse, ready to be pulled out to fulfill an order at a customer’s behest.
Puka Prints was started in 1999 by Chris’s father, Dickie Yokogawa, who had worked since he was a teenager for his uncle’s screenprinting business and fashion company. But Chris had no plans to get into the scene. He had left Hawaiʻi, where he was born and raised, to attend the University of Colorado in Boulder in 1984, earning a degree in marketing. Afterward, he moved to Los Angeles and built a fruitful life as a media director.
But in 2010, Chris found himself wanting to spend more time with his mom, which got him to thinking that if he moved home, he could have a completely different version of adulthood. Chris decided to move back and envisioned starting his own media company, but shortly before his return, Dickie learned he was sick and asked Chris to take over Puka Prints.
One of Puka Prints’ longest and dearest clients is Sig Zane Designs. “Sig and my dad had a very good relationship,” Chris recalls. When he was still in LA preparing to move back to Hawaiʻi, Dickie called to introduce him to the Sig Zane team. When Dickie died just weeks after Chris moved back, Sig Zane was at the funeral “putting leis on the altar.”
“Dickie was a force of nature and a barrel of laughs,” says Ipo Kahele, the production manager of Sig Zane Designs. In the ’80s, during the early years of the brand, they worked with companies like Island Hand Blockers and G. Von Hamm Textiles. Kahele believes Dickie had a connection to one such company, which is how he and Sig met. Early on, Sig Zane Designs began working with Puka Prints to produce their signature silk screen printed designs. “Thanks to Dickie’s years of experience and his know-how in the printing industry, he helped us cement our method of hand-printing with the large screens that we use today, as it best reflected our humble beginnings,” Kahele says. Though some fabric is printed off-island, Puka Prints remains the only screen printer for the brand.
[Puna Prints’ work] exemplifies the art of screen printing, a craft that brings the energy of its tactile process to the finished product.
When Chris took over Puka Prints upon returning to Oʻahu in 2011, there was little in terms of a real business structure, though according to a family member it was doing well and Dickie was having fun choosing and mentoring clients, which included You and Me Naturally and Mamo Howell. In the first few months, Chris had to find a new location, move all the equipment over, and shore up the termite-eaten tables. He also got employees on payroll and health insurance. It was a chance to apply skills he had gained working for a small media business in LA to his new life.
“Chris is about as solid a partner you could ever ask for,” says Kahele. “He is always willing to go that extra mile when we need help. He helps us find workable solutions when we are in a bind. He is honest when things are not working for them, or when we need to adjust things on our end. His integrity is unquestionable.”
These days at the warehouse, among hundreds of screens and rolls of films, there are frames labeled for Hawai‘i brands Roberta Oaks, Tutuvi Designs, and Nakeʻu Awai as well as numerous hula hālau. According to Chris, about 70 percent of his orders are from commercial clients with stores, while the remainder is a mix of hālau, individuals with personal projects, and colleges and schools. Puka Prints has screen printed custom fabric for Blaisdell uniforms, Kamehameha Schools kihei, and hālau pāʻū or performances. You have likely encountered its work on an aloha shirt at a party or a booth at Merrie Monarch.
Puka Prints is the only company to commercially screen print fabric for others in Hawaiʻi (unlike those that screen print products or their own materials). In 1997, when Puka Prints was nascent, the third largest manufacturing industry in Hawaiʻi was apparel and textiles, according to Hawaiʻi’s Department of Economic Business and Development; by 2021 they didn’t even register on the DBEDT manufacturing industry report. Still, Chris sees a rise of new local fashion lines interested in keeping business local, which he attributes in part to the newfound ease of selling online and on Instagram. Unlike having fabric produced overseas, which usually requires a high minimum yardage, Puka Prints also allows new and small-scale designers to make a limited run of fabric.
Another local company Chris has supported is Jana Lam, which he helped set up screen printing production. More than 14 years ago, Jana Lam sought out Puka Prints to learn more about screen printing, as she remembers it, and Chris welcomed her and answered all of her questions. What started with Lam using Puka Prints to produce fabric for a project for a friend turned into Chris helping her set up her own workshop and making her company’s large repeat screens. “Through the years he has helped me on numerous occasions, with the build of our washout, with the design of our repeat tables; you name it, he is always willing to lend a hand,” Lam says via email, emphasizing how thankful and grateful she is for him.
For Chris, his company is an important resource — one that would be cost-prohibitive to most clients if he raised his prices as he really should. “It’s a challenge,” Chris says. “My costs are outpacing my revenue. If I wanted to really move forward, then I would get new equipment, new machines, and a bigger place.” While he says industrial warehouses are hard to find because they’re being rented by construction companies, Chris is hopeful about new hires, which will enable him to print on the weekends. He doesn’t see a future in which he will want, or be able, to retire.
Most of us have encountered the work of Puka Prints on an aloha shirt worn by a friend or politician or at a booth at Merrie Monarch. It exemplifies the art of screen printing, a craft that brings the energy of its tactile process to the finished product: ink atop fabric, layered elements, charming imperfections. In a time when the digital world feels like it is rapidly expanding, seeing a product made by hand rather than machine feels like a statement of intention and care. It feels like Hawai‘i.