HE THREAD OF fashion designer Penelope Tinitali’s life is sewing. Her mother was a seamstress, and her grandmother was a seamstress, as were all of her aunties. It’s what brought her back to her culture, and where she found her passion.
After moving from Samoa to the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s, Tinitali’s mother ran a clothing store in Tacoma, making and selling traditional Polynesian clothing, like tropical shirts (Aloha shirts) and mu’umu’us (patterned women’s dresses), and even hosting fashion shows.
“We grew up with fashion,” says Tinitali. “My mom lost the business, so we forgot about the culture.”
As Tinitali learned how to sew like her aunts and mother before her, she also began researching her culture, and it brought her to tears realizing how much she had grown disconnected from it.
Now, Tinitali runs her own custom fashion design company, the newly rebranded Teine Teuteu, which had been called Oh Sew Islander. She is director of the annual Samoan fashion show at the Asian Pacific Cultural Center in Tacoma. She and her sister Falefitu Tinitali, who began sewing and designing after she saw her sister’s passion for it, presented their own fashion lines in this year’s show.
The Tinitali sisters aren’t the only ones using fashion to reconnect to and highlight their Polynesian culture.