Maui business outfitting men for prom
By Christie Wilson
Neighbor Island Editor
WAILUKU, Maui — In 52 years of running Gilbert's Formal Wear, Susanne Hotta has seen it all in men's prom attire: dinner jackets in school colors, white tails, extra-wide lapels, platform shoes — and this season, believe it or not, zoot suits.
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Hotta, 82, said she tries to talk kids out of donning the flamboyant ensembles adapted from the 1940s: baggy pants, an oversized jacket, two-tone shoes, a double chain dangling below the knee and a hat.
Susanne Hotta of Gilbert's Formal Wear in Wailuku adjusts the collar on King Kekaulike High School student Daniel Paiva's zoot suit. Paiva was headed to the junior prom last Saturday night at the Hyatt Regency Maui.
"It's bad taste," frowns Hisako Hirata, Hotta's business partner for the past 30 years.
Hotta said her satisfaction comes from making sure men look nice, preferably in something more conservative.
"I love to dress the men up. They come here with their baggy pants and T-shirts and we have to fit them and tell them how be a gentleman," she said. "I like to see the boys dress up. You cannot recognize them, they're so handsome."
Tuxedo rentals were not part of the business when Hotta's husband opened Gilbert's on Dec. 3, 1949, as a men's wear store on the corner of Market and Vineyard streets in Wailuku town. Only a few weeks later, on Jan. 16, 1950, Gilbert Hotta and two other men were swept out to sea while fishing at Kahakuloa.
At the time, Susanne Hotta was a housewife with four young children and no business experience.
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"I thought, 'What should I do?' " she said. "It was a big question mark. I just can't be staying home and taking care of the children."
Hisako Hirata, left, has been in business with Susanne Hotta for 30 years. Hotta, 82, has run Gilbert's Formal Wear since 1950.
So she took over the shop, sticking with it through the ups and downs and putting her children through college.
Hotta proved to be an astute businesswoman when Gilbert's became the first place on Maui to offer formal wear rentals in the late 1950s.
The store was selling white dinner jackets for proms — the style of the day — for $15. As more and more parents came in to see if Hotta would buy back the jackets after they had been worn, she hatched the idea of renting them, and soon added tuxedos.
Despite the occasional colorful departure — including aloha-print cummerbunds — the basic black tuxedo with notched collar remains the standard, Hotta said.
Gilbert's charges high school students a discounted rate of $100 for most formal rentals, and each tux walks out the door with a printed public service message in a pocket courtesy of Gilbert's and Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Hotta's only son, Raymond, was killed in Honolulu in 1979 by a drunken driver.
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Selling aloha shirts has been a Gilbert's staple from the beginning. The store carries classic pineapple, ukulele and "Magnum, P.I." orchid prints, among others.
Gilbert's opened at Market and Vineyard streets in Wailuku in 1949.
The aloha shirts are featured on the Gilbert's Formal Wear Web site, set up by Hotta's oldest daughter, and orders have been coming in from the Mainland.
The Web site might be the only thing that's high-tech about Gilbert's, which can attribute its success to old-fashioned values that — like a good tuxedo — never go out of style.
"We run it like a family store," said Hotta, who has dressed three generations of some Maui families. "You have to be real honest and nice and sincere to the people. I don't want to just take their money. You have to be like that to be successful."
Reach Christie Wilson at cwilson@honoluluadvertiser.com or (808) 244-4880.
