Walking in Confident Beauty
Raised primarily in Colorado, Anna Kahalekulu (Native Hawaiian) is the daughter of a Hawaiian father and Caucasian mother. Her dad took the family home to Hawai’i often so they could reconnect. Hula was Anna’s first cultural art medium that she learned. In 2007, she moved home and settled on Maui, where she began learning fashion and traditional weaving.
Anna’s brand, Kūlua, made its debut in 2015 at the MAMo Wearable Art Show hosted by the PA’I Foundation. She has shown collections annually for five years in the Maui show and twice in Honolulu. Kūlua has part-time and full-time employees, seven wholesale accounts, a storefront, and an online shop.
Anna is a 2020 First Peoples Fund Artists in Business Leadership (ABL) fellow and lives in Wailuku, Hawai’i, with her family.
“A garment isn’t fully finished until it comes to life as it is worn,”
At a Maui Arts & Cultural Center event, Anna was standing in line at the bar during intermission when a tall woman caught her attention by the confident way she carried herself. With a start, Anna realized the dress the woman was wearing was one of her own creations — a combination of fabric, texture, form, and flow. And now, movement.
“A garment isn’t fully finished until it comes to life as it is worn,” Anna says. “It’s always my aim that the woman who wears my creations will walk a little taller, feeling connected, grounded, and beautiful.”
Anna danced hula from a young age, but when she started a family of her own, hula took on a different role in her work in fashion. There is always a story behind her print designs and colors. They mirror what Anna learned through her hula life, telling her people’s stories through dance and music.
“Beyond that, there’s a larger context to the work that I’ve chosen to do,” she says. “It’s hugely important to have Hawaiians creating and making, then also being in public spaces and having storefronts. That brings products and bearing to the community because we not only exist within ourselves, but we exist in the larger society.”
The color story of Anna’s creations comes from an earthy palette. Even her brighter colors are subtle, never loud or bold. But they make people look twice, like Anna did herself when she saw the woman at the Cultural Center. The fabric designs are personal to Anna, but she leaves room for the wearer to define and express the final meaning themselves.
