V&A
Coral Orange Hibiscus Cotton Camp Shirt
1970s · 1960s · Jamaican
Designer
National Sports Shirts
Production
ready-to-wear
Material
cotton
Culture
Jamaican
Movement
Hippie / Counterculture
Influences
Caribbean resort wear · Hawaiian shirt styling
A short-sleeved camp collar shirt featuring a vibrant tropical print with coral-orange hibiscus flowers and green foliage against a cream background. The shirt displays the characteristic boxy, relaxed silhouette of late 1960s leisure wear, with a straight hem designed to be worn untucked. The camp collar lies flat against the chest without a neckband, creating the casual open-neck styling popular in resort and vacation wear. The print shows bold, stylized floral motifs typical of Caribbean textile design, with large-scale hibiscus blooms rendered in saturated coral tones. The cotton fabric appears to be a medium-weight plain weave suitable for warm climates, reflecting the garment's origins as practical tropical leisurewear that gained popularity during the counterculture movement's embrace of non-Western aesthetics.
shirt/blouseloose fitcollarlesship length
Connected To
Movement·Hippie / Counterculture
LINEAGEsame era · cross-culture→ directed
Lineage: “Hawaiian shirt styling”
These two shirts capture the 1970s counterculture's split personality: the European dress shirt with its ghost-pale stripes and turtleneck collar represents the movement's cerebral, minimalist side—all that self-conscious restraint and geometric purity. The Jamaican camp shirt explodes in the opposite direction with its hibiscus-drunk coral and relaxed resort styling, embodying the era's simultaneous embrace of hedonistic escapism and Third World romanticism.
Pull the Thread→
Follow this garment wherever the graph leads
