Landlubbers think of boardshorts as little more than a basic utilitarian piece of clothing, Within the ocean sports community, however, each stitch, waistband and seam detail speaks of one unforgettable summer.

A new exhibition at the Hono­lulu Museum of Art brings boardshorts out of the water and into the Textile Gallery, where viewers can appreciate the evolution of the humble garment.

“Boardshorts: A Perfect Fit” was initially conceived to run in conjunction with the museum’s annual Surf Film Festival that continues through July 31, said Sara Oka, manager of the textile collection. Not a water person, she said she initially approached the project from a visual perspective.

“I thought about the way boardshorts have become a canvas that people can live in 24 hours a day,” she said. “I was pretty naive to think I could do it. I thought it would be fun, but it really involved a lot of the community, from people who collect boardshorts to surfers to lifeguards. It was a real community effort because we don’t have a collection here. I was able to collect a dozen.”

The bulk of the exhibition was pieced together by borrowing from private collections and manufacturers such as Quiksilver, Hawaiian Island Creations, Local Motion, Town & Country Surf and Surf Line Hawaii. Pieces range from 1950s custom-tailored shorts stitched up at such mom-and-pop businesses as the H. Miura Store in Hale­iwa, Nii’s in Makaha and Take’s in Waikiki, to a ’90s Quiksilver boardshort with a gothic 3-D print. Use the 3-D glasses hanging nearby and you’ll see skulls and crosses popping out of the design.

Oka credits boardshort collector Joe Welch with walking her through Boardshorts 101, and along the way, the show evolved from the purely visual to embracing surf culture and its lifestyle. Included in the exhibition are boards and swimwear that belonged to surf stars past and present including Eddie Aikau, Lisa Anderson, Gerry Lopez, Carissa Moore and Kelly Slater.

Before the boardshort, men didn’t think of entering the water in polite company in anything less than the wool onesies like those worn by Duke Kahanamoku in his younger photos. For a man to appear shirtless in public was considered indecent, according to Oka. It wasn’t until Kahanamoku’s fellow Olympian Johnny Weissmuller appeared shirtless in the 1930s “Tarzan” films that mores changed. This paved the way for early swim trunks, followed by longer “baggies” that got their name from the way they filled with water and ballooned out, said Mark Fragale, curator and “aloha ambassador” at the Hono­lulu Surfing Museum at Jimmy Buffett’s at the Beachcomber.

“The boardshorts name came from Australia, and the name ‘baggies’ has become lost to time,” he said.

The oldest boardshorts, or swim trunks, were made of regular cotton fabric that didn’t dry easily and left surfers and swimmers with rashes from constant wear and friction, according to Fragale. Continued growth of competitive surfing led to performance-based improvements in design, construction and materials, from pocket grommets that release collected sand to today’s regenerated P.E.T. (polyethylene terephthalate, aka recycled plastic) material touted by Nike for its “performance water-repellent finish.”

“They just get better and better,” said Pua Rochlen of Surf Line/Jams World. Even so, he said, “My best pair are original drawstring Jams in cotton. Loose, long, comfortable and old-school.” He said he could wear them to “beach, bike, hike, sleep and prance.”

Similarly, during a docent-led tour last week, Fragale beamed as he explained his relationship to a pair of 46-year-old Hang Ten boardshorts hanging on the wall.

“I remember going into a surf shop and coming out with that pair, and the air smelled fresher, the water felt cleaner,” he said. “It was summer and everything was perfect. There was no school, so we could just go surfing every day.”

For him the boardshorts were symbolic of the brotherhood of watermen. “There were no special clothes for surfers, so they became the only uniform for what we were doing.”

Today the uniform has been co-opted by those who admire the lifestyle but never go near water. Fragale said he learned from Quiksilver’s Glen Moncata that only 15 percent of boardshorts sold ever go into the water. The rest serve as cas­ual wear at home or at play.

FIREFIGHTER and OnoPops co-founder Joe Welch isn’t particular about the boardshorts he wears, scooping them up at Costco for about $15 apiece, but he has an eye for collectibles, having built his approximately 60-piece collection from $3 to $5 thrift-shop finds beginning in the ’90s.

He said that at the time he had a girlfriend who scoured thrift shops for vintage aloha shirts and boardshorts, just before manufacturers started making the latter for women.

Tagging along, he was drawn to boardshorts of the 1960s through ’80s. With little written history about them, it took sitting down with Quiksilver experts to be able to link them to specific years.

“It wasn’t that long ago, but it was always interesting to see vintage surf pictures with guys wearing these shorts and to see their evolution, starting with cotton-canvassy fabrics in Japa­nese prints, then to nylon in one color. In the 1970s more side panels were added, and in the ’80s there were neon prints.”

Welch said his collection stopped with the ’80s styles. “It was so close to where I was already; (collecting later versions) wasn’t interesting to me.”

Because of his work, he doesn’t have much time to search thrift stores anymore, but said that to this day, “I can walk by the racks and pick ’em out by their color and feel.”

Unfortunately, he believes collectible boardshorts are just as hard to come by now as vintage aloha shirts. “That era, of the ’60s and ’70s in thrift stores, has passed. They’re gone for good,” he said.

But the appreciation for the vintage styles hasn’t changed, and companies like Surf Line have gone back into their archives to reproduce historic prints and styles. Drawstrings and snap closures that disappeared with the introduction of Velcro are also making a comeback.

Welch continues to observe the evolution of the boardshort. After maintaining a long 21- to 22-inch length for about 15 years, he said styles have been trending shorter, at 18 inches, which he considers a better length for surfing because it doesn’t get caught over the knees when trying to stand up.

For a while, Welch, who studied apparel design, considered opening a surf shop and suggested that in this individualist era, it’s not too far-fetched to believe boardshorts may one day come full circle, being custom made for $200 or so.

“It seemed like boardshorts were priced at around $50 or $60 forever, but now there are Hurley ones for $150. It’s not too far away from $200,” he said.