MANAOLA

Carrington Manaola Yap is a native Hawaiian fashion designer from Kohala, Hawaii who created luxury Hawaiian lifestyle brand MANAOLA in 2014. Inspired by his cultural upbringing as a life-long hula practitioner, he translates Hawaiian spirituality and Hawaiis unique beauty into prints that embody repetitious patterns in nature. Born into a family of award-winning hula practitioners and musicians, Yap learned costume design, research and styling from his mother, kumu hula and musician Nani Lim Yap through his studies in halau. This hula foundation provided him with a platform to develop interests in textile and design, translating his talents into performance art. Yap employs a traditional Hawaiian stamping method called ohe kapala (bamboo stamping) as the foundation of his original designs. Manaola Hawaiis prints are first hand-carved by the designer onto bamboo laths before they are stamped and digitized onto modern silhouettes. Each design is grounded in native Hawaiian ideolog...