Deep Roots in Florida
Okihasi was born out of our lifelong love for Florida’s beauty and a passionate desire to celebrate its unique ecosystems. From scrub to flatwoods, from saltwater to fresh, Florida is home to diverse communities of flora and fauna. As a small, family-owned business operated by native Floridians, we’re close to the landscapes, seascapes and living things that have inspired us to design apparel that highlights timeless natural wonders.
NATURAL INSPIRATION
A small child investigates a tidal pool and is intrigued by the myriad lifeforms he finds there. The closer he looks, the more discoveries he makes. Sea stars, urchins, crabs, blennies with faces like Muppets and, “Wow, what is that?” At Okihasi, we have retained that fascination with Florida’s natural world and are dedicated to reminding people of its critical importance.
CONSERVATION ETHIC
We support the essential efforts by local communities and conservation-minded organizations, including Conservation Florida and the Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation, to preserve and protect Florida’s natural assets. Dolphins, manatees, flamingos, sea turtles and marlins are but the stars of a show with a supporting cast of thousands. We invite you to demonstrate your support and fondness for the real Florida by wearing an Okihasi shirt and helping us ensure its vitality for generations.
Call me anytime. I promptly return all messages.
Sincerely,
John Mizell
(850) 704-9539 - please leave a message if I do not pick up :)
Wear Okihasi and Demonstrate Your Love for Florida’s Environment.
As a college student, I traveled to a South Africa and worked on a study involving meerkats and Cape ground squirrels. While there, I saw spectacular exotic species — warthogs and snake-eating secretary birds and the exceedingly rare brown hyena.
But it was upon my return to the United States that a small, brown bird enabled me to appreciate the importance of all species to the web of life and taught me that a critically endangered, seemingly inconsequential bug eater can inspire conservation efforts capable of preserving an entire ecosystem.
Birders talk about their “spark bird,” the species that stimulated in them a lifelong fascination with nature. For me, it was that small, brown bird — the Florida grasshopper sparrow, introduced to me by a University of Central Florida professor during a trip to the Kissimmee Prairie Preserve.
I grew up amid prickly pear cacti and gopher tortoises at the tip of the Lake Wales Ridge in Central Florida. My mother was a middle school science teacher. As a kid, my appreciate for nature and wildlife was limited, but my life changed when I changed my college major from psychology to biology.
Some years after graduating, I was part of a team establishing a STEM school in Ashville, North Carolina, when my parents, returning from a trip to Hawaii, presented me with an authentic aloha shirt that featured a marine scene. I wore only solid-colored shirts at the time, and my first reaction was “I’ll never wear this.” But I did, and I was surprised by all the conversations that shirt started, and I bought more of them.
In the midst of the COVID pandemic, I, like many others, thought about starting a business, and Okihasi was born. It combines my fondness for aloha shirts with my love for Florida’s diverse ecosystems.
My shirts, like that aloha shirt that landed in the mountains of western North Carolina, spark conversations — among ecologists, environmentalists, birders and nature enthusiasts of all stripes.
I find that gratifying and hope Okihasi Floridian men’s shirts help inspire people to preserve natural areas, strike a balance between development and conservation and save creatures great and small, including those little brown birds.
Sincerely,
John Mizell