Palaka: God’s Woven Resilience
December 2025
Please take a deep breath in this present moment with me. This collection will be sharing stories of my ancestral lines, of the land I was planted on, and of my own spiritʻs dance in the universe. As you engage with this collection, I invite you to imagine you are walking through a museum, moving through time and space. I would love for love for you to envision and feel what it is like being in the body of your own peopleʻs lineages, the places you have traveled throughout the world, and the God-given gifts that live inside of you.
This collection presents three pieces that flowed from a meditation on a single question: How do I honor my kuleana (responsibility | privilege) to my ancestral lineage, to the ‘āina and community that raised me, and to my soulʻs unique calling?
Represented in each piece are three forms of resilience: resilience of our people, resilience of the land, and resilience of the soul.
We each carry an earthly kuleana and a divine responsibility. I believe both can exist in harmony. I deeply feel in honoring both, we can be bridges for more love, kindness, and compassion.
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If palaka could speak a language, it would be Hawaiian Pidgin. Born from the multicultural plantation era in Hawaiʻi, palaka textile was fashioned into uniforms for the influx of immigrant plantation laborers who arrived between the mid-1800s and mid-1900s, worn by Hawaiian, Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, and Puerto Rican laboring communities. Palaka was known as the garment that weathered harsh working conditions and held entire communities through survival. Thus, in time, palaka became a symbol of solidarity across various ethnic lineages who learned to work and live side by side. Yes, cross-cultural tensions inevitably existed in the midst of the mix, yet in time, this gave rise to a sense of unity against power structures in the workforce. Today, palaka is a nostalgic emblem of local identity in its renaissance, a testament to what arises when island people unite amid great change and adversity.
In the making of this collection, while I sensed the ache of those who labored at the expense of their bodies, I also felt the pain of the ʻāina for what it endured through this era, and the profound loss experienced by Native Hawaiians as their lands and ways of life were transformed. With the shift from collective survival states of being, I hope to see that caring for our communities comes from a place of collaboration, creativity, reciprocity, and balanced relationship with ʻāina.
This collection does not glorify struggle, but rather highlights the resilience that arises from moving beyond survival, which opens the floodgates of vitality, inspires communities, and births the highest forms of grace, creativity, and abundance!
This collection is a call for us to find solace in times of chaos and faith.
It is a call for us to return our love to the earth, and the communities we call home.
It is a call for us to live our reason for being.
Lola Dress, ‘Āina Revival Set, and Ikigai DANCE! Set sequentially reflect the journey of God planting a seed, our ancestors watering it, and the generation of Now living to harvest its abundance.
May this collection be a meditation on nurturing our earthly kuleana to our bodies, communities, and to the places we call home. May this collection also remind us of our divine assignments, and the thread of pure love that weave all of humanity together.
With Love,
Kiyomi
Lola Dress
My Lola lived in the Old ʻEwa Villages of Honouliuli when she moved from Luzon, Philippines to Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi. In my memories, I see her tending to rows of orchid plants in her flowy mu’u' mu’u and sleeping gowns. I imagine her garden as a place of solace, finding relaxation in the universal language of plants which soothed her discomfort of being in a foreign place.
This dress is intended to be worn frolicking in nature and lounging around your home. May it bring you a sense of feminine ease, and may you breathe as beautifully as an orchid in Lolaʻs garden.
My Lola has guided me to initiate my Pacific-bound pilgrimage in 2023, moving back home to Oʻahu from the city of Seattle to deepen my roots in Hawaiʻi, with my ʻohana, and the motherlands. Presently, I feel her guardian spirit mostly in the southwest salt waters of Kauaʻi. Agyamanak, Grandma Lola. ♡
Lola Dress comes in the colors Rosas (Desert Rose Pink) and Lupa (Earth Brown).
‘Āina Revival Set
This piece is for the people who show up for mama earth.
For the ones whose immigrant ancestors worked at the expense of their bodies, so that we could return to the land with care, gratitude, and renewed awareness.
As I time travelled to create this collection, I found the resilience of not only island people, but of the ‘āina. Enduring a deep separation from human care, shaped by eras of industry, overworked soils, and single-crop plantations, her green keeps returning, her waters keep moving, and she continues to offer life to us.
I find beauty and healing in aloha ʻāina days. Healing is truly non-linear, and transcends space and time. Descendants of distant lands who worked side-by-side in the sugar cane fields are now freely side-by-side in the loʻi. We want to stand with Kānaka Maoli, holding shared visions to revive the ʻāina. The children of Hawaiʻi (and even visitors from all over the world) are working mauka to makai, learning sense of place, laughing, sweating, singing, sharing stories, and speaking pule from their hearts. This work is love. This work is continual. We may show up imperfectly, but we leave knowing we have poured our genuine love in some way.
On Kaua’i, I have been giving my Saturdays to aloha ‘āina with the community. I also invite my ancestors who have labored on plantations and those who have been separated from their homelands, to witness how much we have shifted focus from from extraction to reciprocity, and to remind them that their hard work, struggle, and survival were never in vain. They may rest in me, my body, now.
This set is intended to be worn for aloha ‘āina purposes, whether in your backyard mala, a community workday, or simply tending to your nervous system immersed in nature.
I am eternally grateful to the local people of Hawaiʻi who hold down this fort with the most immense love Iʻve ever witnessed, and to Kānaka Maoli who continue to point me toward my own moʻokūʻauhau (lineages) and teach me about the sacred essence of aloha ʻāina and land stewardship.
E malama ʻoe i ka ʻāina, e malama ka ʻāina ia ʻoe. (Take care of the land and the land will take care of you.)
Ua Mau ke Ea o ka ʻĀina i ka Pono. ♡
ʻĀina Revival Set comes in the colors Mauka (To The Mountains Green) and Makai (To The Sea Blue).
Ikigai DANCE! Set
In Japanese, Ikigai (生き甲斐) means “a reason for being”, or “that which makes life feel worthwhile.”
Iki (生き) means life, aliveness, breath.
Gai (甲斐) means worth, value, or fruitfulness; with kanji characters that translates to armor, number one (甲) and beautiful, elegant (斐).
To me, our ikigai is what builds our resilience, it is what flows from our spirit with grace.
Dance is my ikigai. Dance is my resistance as well as resilience. Beyond culture, beyond ancestral lineages, beyond worldly borders, it is our pure gift to give and to protect. It lives in simple moments, too, like the feeling of light reflecting off a pebbly river, a foraged bouquet of herbs and flowers, or a warm cup of cacao.
As the final piece of Palaka: Godʻs Woven Resilience, Ikigai DANCE! represents my soulʻs fire, and the future I wish to carry forward. More dancing, more rest, more singing, more gardens, more live music, more bodies full of vitality, more communities of love. I desire a world where resistance against unbalanced systems flows in the spirit of mutual care, abundance, and creativity.
Survival is not the end goal, we must thrive. We must live our reason for being.
What is your ikigai?
Ikigai DANCE! Set comes in the colors Aka (赤 Passion Red) and Ki 黄 (Life-Force Gold).
Thank you for your time and presence with Palaka: Godʻs Woven Resilience.
As you leave this space, I would love to hear what this collection stirs in you,
the seeds God has planted for you and your lineage,
the ancestral stories that live in your body and the ones you are alchemizing,
your relationship with the places on earth you call home,
and how all of this might shape your dance through this lifetime.
If you feel called to share, please email me love@kiyomisolace.com or send me a message on Instagram @kiyomisolace.
You are a blessing! I receive your stories with warmth and sincere gratitude.
With all the love in my heart, from my ancestors to yours,
Kiyomi Sales
