Designer set to make debut at London fashion event
WAILUKU, Maui (AP) — A clothing entrepreneur is set to become the first fashion designer to represent a Hawaiian collection in London, a report said.
Po-Mahina Designs owner Kanoelani Davis is scheduled to make her debut at London Pacific Fashion Week next month.
The event beginning Sept. 13 is part of the prestigious London Fashion Week, considered one of the world’s premier fashion venues.
Davis began working with designs in her hula school and then made various clothing items before evolving the part-time venture into a full-time business around 2014-2015.
Her designs emphasize natural elements including rain, clouds and wind and draw from her life experiences on Molokai, she said.
“Being on Molokai, there wasn’t many jobs, and it was a choice I had to make as a single mother to either go full time or work three or four jobs to make ends meet,” said Davis, who has four daughters.
She was first featured in the 2015 MAMo Wearable Art Show on Maui and Oahu and was invited to New Zealand’s 2017 Pacific Fusion Fashion Show.
Last year, Davis was invited to New York Fashion Week and Miami Swim Week, but decided instead to put funds she had raised toward causes at home including relief for victims of flooding on Kauai and the Kilauea eruption.
The 15 fashion garments she plans to debut in London feature “four major feminine elemental forms of Hawaii,” she said.
“The most important part of honoring our elements is that we’re not here to change them,” Davis said. “We need to work with the elements themselves.”
Restoration project rejuvenating Kauai stream
LIHUE, Kauai (AP) — A Hawaii stream is coming back to life with help from a watershed restoration project, officials said.
The project funded by a state Department of Health and the federal Environmental Protection Agency has produced positive results in the Waipa Stream on Kauai.
The $385,000 project that began in 2016 aims to remove dense hau bushes from stream banks and surrounding areas while clearing a path for healthy water flow and space for native plants. Food forests are taking root and there is a new swimming hole, officials said.
The project overseen by the Waipa Foundation has placed fencing around fields to block feral pigs and in pasture land with horses and cows. The fencing keeps the animals out of the water and helps lower bacteria levels below the state threshold for clean streams.
Team members have completed about three-fourths of the project, said Matt Rosner, a hydrologist who manages the project.
“The last one-fourth of it’s the toughest,” he said. “It’s the lowest (in elevation). Mud and mosquitoes. It’s not going to be easy.”
Rosner and his team spend hours with chain saws clearing bush from stream banks, stacking wood and chipping it for mulch.
Paul Simon plants a tree at forest preserve
KULA, Maui (AP) — Musician Paul Simon joined environmentalists trying to reinvigorate a Hawaii forest on Maui and planted a tree during a ceremony, a report said.
The singer-songwriter visited Auwahi Forest Restoration Project with volunteers who are trying to revive plant life in the area.
Simon helped plant a lama tree and participated in chants with the group after a helicopter tour that he called “awe-inspiring” and “life-changing.”
Simon inserted the plant and a scroll into a hole before refilling the soil and speaking with group members.
“To even sit with you guys and be in the same community is such a privilege,” Simon said.
The part-time Maui resident performed two environmental benefit concerts at the Maui Arts &Cultural Center earlier last week that drew more than 8,000 attendees.