Ben Marcus interviewed Walter Hoffman and Dick Metz about the origins of surf trunks. Hoffman, a pioneering big-wave surfer, was the scion to Hoffman Fabrics, the company that would later supply materials to nearly every surfwear company in America. Metz helped build the Hobie Surfboards empire and later founded the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center. This interview was recorded in 2005.

One thing that really interests me is how your exposure to Hawaii transformed Hoffman Fabrics. Your father, Rube Hoffman, was from the East Coast originally?

Hoffman: From New York. After World War II he came to the West Coast and married my mother. He had no money, really. He got into converting, which was buying gray goods—bleached off-white goods, woven cottons and rayons—and dying them. And then he started printing them. That was how Hoffman Fabrics started.

When did you and your brother [Flippy Hoffman] start surfing, and when did you first go to Hawaii?

Hoffman: We started surfing in 1945. In 1949 I graduated high school and, along with a friend of mine, went to Hawaii on the SS Lurline.

I read somewhere that you ate for three days on the Lurline, and the minute you got off the boat you went straight to Nat Norfleet for trunks and shirts.

Hoffman: My dad knew old man Norfleet, and we got Hawaiian shirts but I don’t think we got trunks. At the time there were three places making custom surf trunks: Lynn's, going back to the 40s, then Take’s, and then there was M Nii on the West Side.

Could you get any of those in California?

Hoffman: No, back home we wore Catalina, Jantzen and McGregor bathing suits. In Hawaii, at first, the big deal was Lynn's. They made suits for the Outrigger Canoe Club, and all the beach boys. You could always tell, they all had stripes on the side. Good trunks. Cotton twill weave, you could wear them forever.

Hoffman: The Navy trunks had a white and red stripe on the sides.

Metz: You had three choices. You had red with blue and white, white with blue, and then red with the blue on top, on the waistband.

Hoffman: The ones with the button-fly, that was the trunk that everybody went after, all the surfers. That was the first that I know of a surf trunk per se, with the look. Then we started going . . . .

Hoffman: I was gonna say Take's in Waikiki, because Lynn’s couldn’t keep up.

Was Lynn’s a haole company or a local company?

Metz: A local Hawaiian deal. It was just a store.

Hoffman: That made custom-made bathing suits.

Hoffman: But they did a hell of a business. So Take’s came in and started making trunks in Waikiki. Then in winter, we were going to Makaha and there was a little tailor shop out there called M Nii...

Metz: He made suits. And pants. Corduroy pants. When the locals were having a wedding or something he’d make them a full-blown suit. The shop was a little one-room deal up off the ground about four or five feet. Minoru Nii was his name. He was missing a leg. What was he, Filipino or Chinese?

Metz: Little bitty guy. And he had a broomstick with all these different ribbons of cloth hanging off it. So you'd go in there and . . . at Lynn's you didn’t have that many choices. At M. Nii you had every choice. Black trunks with green stripes, anything you wanted. You'd point to the colors you wanted, and he'd snip off a little piece of fabric and staple it to your order card.

Metz: Oh it was great fun. At first we were getting them shorter, then we got him to make them right down to the knees. That way, when you were sitting on your board the wax wouldn’t get in the hair of your leg.

Hoffman: Walkshorts, too, he made corduroy walkshorts.

Metz: And M Nii I think was the guy who started putting wax pockets on the trunks. That was the first wax pocket I ever saw.

Who talked him into doing trunks in the first place?

Hoffman: The locals started getting trunks made there. The few local kids who were surfing out there. So we started going there, out to the West Side, and we found M. Nii.

Do you remember your first pair of trunks from there?

Hoffman: The first pair, and I've still got 'em, were denim. Just plain denim surf trunks.

Metz: In my recollection, they only cost like three dollars.

Metz: You'd order a whole bunch to take home. I remember my first trip to Hawaii, near the end, I went in and said, “Mr. Nii, I am going home next week." He said, “I’ll have them done, don’t worry, don’t worry.” So the day comes, I'm leaving on the Lurline at 4:00, all the Hawaiians from the Outrigger came down to give me a big going away party. We’re on the boat, drinking and talking, and here comes M Nii on his crutch, hobbling up the gangplank with my four pair of trunks. He drove all the way from Waianae.

Metz: No, I couldn’t believe it. He came right aboard the Lurline with four pair of trunks.

He made good money selling trunks, you think?

Hoffman: His shack was no bigger than this room. The wood was falling down, it leaked. He had the electrical wires going up the wall.

Hoffman: A bulb hanging down. An old sewing machine. He and his wife would sit there and sew.

Metz: With an old Singer that you would put your foot on.

Hoffman: I went back to Makaha a year later, when my daughter Joyce was competing, and walked into M Nii to get a pair of trunks. And here’s his wife, and she's on crutches.

I’d heard those old Singer sewing machines were rough, but damn.

Hoffman: People said she got electrocuted, from a wire, when it was raining.

Metz: It was really weird because he had one leg, and we were all used to that. Then you come back a few years later here she is with only one leg, too! So between them, they had only two legs. That was really bizarre.

So you’d come back to California sporting a pair of M Nii’s and that meant . . . .

Metz: That was like a badge. You’ve been to the North Shore. You've been to Hawaii. You’ve been to Makaha. Everybody wanted a pair but you couldn’t phone your order in. You had to go there.

Back to the Hoffman Fabrics story. Your father Rube was a woolen salesman and did well, and then he had two sons who were in the right place at the right time to take the company into a new direction, with new fabrics and new accounts.

Hoffman: After that first trip to Hawaii, I did one year at LA Community College then to USC where I was on the swim team. And then the Korean War broke out. I got a draft notice, so I joined the Navy and swam on their team in San Diego. I had a choice between the UDT in Seoul and Honolulu. In Hawaii I was in charge of the surfing team with George Downing, who was in the Coast Guard.

Hoffman: Pearl Harbor, Navy supply. I worked from 5:00 in the afternoon until 10:00 at night.

Hoffman: And got paid for living in Waikiki and surfing Makaha all the time.

Hoffman: Four years, got out and came home to work for my father and I hated it. I wanted to go back to Hawaii to live. So I took the fabrics that my dad had to Hawaii, but there wasn’t much demand for woolens. I figured out pretty quick that I had to do prints if I was going to do any business, so that's what I did.

Do you think your exposure to Hawaii transformed Hoffman Fabrics?

Hoffman: As far as prints yes. Today we still do a lot of the printed fabrics.

Metz: Before you went over there Rube wasn’t doing Hawaiian fabrics. So you changed that.

Metz: That’s where you got that idea. And the demand picked up at the same time so it was perfect timing.

What kind of fabrics are we talking about?

Hoffman: Sure, I dealt a lot in silk, but silk was too hot for the tropics.

Everybody thinks those aloha shirts are made of silk, but they aren't, are they?

Hoffman: They’re Rayon, which is cellulose. It’s made out of paper. Wood pulp.

Hoffman: This is the late 50s, because I didn’t get out of the service until 1955. After a couple more trips to Hawaii, eventually, everybody starting thinking I was an authority on Hawaiian print, so we got to sell to Catalina and Laguna Sportswear and Jantzen.

Then on and on, up to Stussy and Quiksilver.

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