Partner Content
Honolulu has hosted Lei Day celebrations on May 1 since 1927, when a newspaper columnist encouraged lei wearers to gather downtown. Now Lei Day includes an all-day festival held at Waikiki’s Kapiolani Park with contests, exhibits, demonstrations and live music, including the 1927 song inspired by the slogan for that first gathering: “May Day Is Lei Day in Hawaii.” On the morning of May 2, the Lei Day royal court takes lei submitted for the contests to Mauna ‘Ala, also known as the Royal Mausoleum State Monument, and to Kawaiaha‘o Church in downtown Honolulu to drape over the tombs of Hawaiian royalty. Giving lei as a sign of love and respect has been part of Polynesian culture for untold centuries.
But not to worry if you missed the festivities on May 1 or 2: OUTRIGGER Resorts & Hotels on Oahu are celebrating all of May as Lei Month, on top of offering year-round lei-making activities for adults and children and providing easy access to unique opportunities to learn more about the flowers and techniques of lei.
Featured photo by HTA Ben Ono.
At OUTRIGGER Waikīkī Paradise Hotel, a group known as Art+Flea will celebrate the creative spirit of lei makers and other artisans with a weekend pop-up market of 40-plus vendors, live musicians and DJs from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on May 17 and 18. Admission is free to this family-friendly event. Built on part of the former estate of Princess Kaiulani, the heir to the Hawaiian kingdom who died in 1899, the hotel also features the signature scent of pikake (jasmine), Princess Kaiulani’s favorite flower and popular lei blossom, along with artistic interpretations of island foliage.
Next door at the International Market Place, visitors can learn how to make a lei for free at the Queen’s Court on Level 1 at noon on the third Thursday of each month, including May 15. They can also walk over to the OUTRIGGER Reef Waikiki Beach Resort to pick up a fresh orchid or kukui nuit lei, along with floral hair clips and other adornments, at the Orchid Lei Company store inside the lobby. Guests at the OUTRIGGER Reef can also participate in a free flower lei-making workshop at the A‘o Cultural Center, one of many free cultural activities year-round.
Make a reservation to tour the hillside Manoa Heritage Center above Waikiki, where you can inhale the fragrance of plumeria, Tahitian gardenia, mock orange and other lei flowers in its 3.5 acres of botanical gardens. The 1-hour tours are offered most Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 1:30 p.m. and Fridays at 2 p.m. On May 10, the center will also host Love Songs and Lei Making, a harp concert by Megan Conley followed by a lei-making workshop led by artist Lilia Lorenzo; tickets are $50 and a portion of the proceeds benefit ocean conservation.
Taking a guided tour of the 20-acre Little Plumeria Farms on Oahu’s North Shore, which include the world’s largest collection of rare hybrid plumerias, is worth making the excursion from Waikiki, especially for the sunset lei making tour. During blooming season, April through October, guides will lead you through the nursery and garden of rare hybrids to a designated picking area, where you then string the blossoms together as the sun sets over the ocean.
This type of lei-making with a needle, known as kui, is the one most commonly taught to visitors, and orchids and plumeria are the most frequently used blossoms for lei-making classes, due to their hardiness and relative affordability. Another traditional method, haku, braids plants such as native ferns and ti leaves, and is often used for lei po‘o, the lei worn around your head like a crown. Meanwhile, the wili method winds a plant fiber or thread around a variety of materials to a backing of ti leaves, lauhala or other sturdy plants. You also don’t need a needle for the kipu‘u method, which knots the stems of leaves together.
To see a brilliant variety of lei techniques and a rainbow of flowers, from white ginger blossoms that lie flat like a lace collar to showy thick garlands of multihued dendrobium orchid petals, head to the lei stands in Chinatown, especially the award-winning Cindy’s Lei Shoppe. Hawaiians have lovingly embraced many fragrant non-native flowers as part of lei culture over the years, among them pikake and plumeria, but also pakalana (cowslip vine), lokelani (damask rose), tuberose and carnation. Some of the most popular native and “canoe plants” (introduced by Polynesian voyagers) in lei-making include ti leaves, palapalai ferns, hala blossoms, maile vines, kukui blossoms and kukui nuts.
And if you run out of time to make your own lei or visit one of the lei shops in town, don’t forget you can stop by one of the lei stands at the airport — a fixture since the 1940s.
