EXCLUSIVE: COULD JAVA WRAPS MAKE A COMEBACK? HOW TWILA WILSON BUILT THE ICONIC ST. CROIX BRAND & WHY VIRGIN ISLANDERS STILL LOVE IT DECADES LATER

Lisa Galiber was the face of Java Wraps for 20 years. Photo Credit: Twila Wilson.

If you grew up or lived on St. Croix during the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s, you’d be hard pressed to find a more popular clothing brand than Java Wraps anywhere in the USVI.

This year marks 53 years since Java Wraps first exploded onto the retail fashion scene with its bright colors and flowers in Christiansted’s bustling downtown shopping district. And now, even after closing shop more than 30 years ago (can you believe it?), the name Java Wraps somehow still manages to spark so much joy in Virgin Islanders today, as it did when the brand was in its heyday.

Like that time, just a couple years ago, when visionary-founder and accidental V.I. fashion icon behind Java Wraps, Twila Wilson, experienced the sweetest surprise that brought her to tears during an early-morning visit at the Saturday Farmer’s Market on St. Croix.

“I see a little girl running by and she has on the cutest Java Wraps dress,” Twila tells me. “I blinked, I double blinked and thought, ‘Oh my God, where did she get that?’”

Child model wearing Java Wraps. Photo Credit: Twila Wilson.

As she bent down to get a closer look at the girl, “the cutest little lady, a grandma,” Twila says, walked up and tapped her on her shoulder, asking, ‘You’re Twila, right?’”

“And I says, ‘Yes, I am.’ And she says, ‘That’s my granddaughter.’ And I say, ‘Where did you get that Java Wraps?’”

You criers out there, brace yourself.

Twila continues, “And she said, ‘My dream has come true. I had just had a son, and I dreamed one day that I would have a granddaughter, and you were having a sale, and I said, ‘That’s crazy, but I’m just going to buy a little dress because maybe I’ll have a granddaughter one day to wear Java Wraps.’”

Twila began to sob. Here it was, long after her stores had closed, the Java Wraps brand was still being introduced to younger generations.

Secret to Java Wraps Success

The thing is, Twila says, “We designed it for St. Croix and St. Thomas,” when asked about the secret to Java Wraps’ seeming overnight success when it launched on St. Croix in 1973.

“We took beautiful textiles that were already in Indonesia and changed the coloring and changed the scale and the design,” she explains. “We absolutely focused on the Caribbean. It worked for us because the locals got it immediately and they were our marketing—there’s no question about it. The tourists would come and they would see everybody in these clothing, and it would start at the airport. It was phenomenal. The locals were invested in it because it was very specific and inclusive.”

“We were not trying to be stateside, we were not trying to be anything. We just wanted to be really pretty and very Caribbean,” she says.

And building a brand that was “really pretty and very Caribbean” paid off big for the professionally trained interior designer, now 77. Besides its locations on St. Croix and St. Thomas, Twila opened Java Wraps stores in St. Maarten and Old San Juan. Then, franchising took off all over the Caribbean, with stores springing up in Aruba, Anguilla, and more, in addition to an army of wholesale clients that carried the brand in their shops and boutiques.

“I think that the Caribbean, in general, women and men, are very tuned into textiles, and have been for a couple hundred years,” Twila says. “It’s been a trading post, and they’ve seen beautiful things coming and going. And when I arrived in St. Croix, I wore the sarongs.”

Those sarongs, which would eventually become Java Wraps’ first retail items, were made from vibrant batik fabric sourced in Indonesia. When she was living and working in New York City, frequent business trips took her to Indonesia and throughout Southeast Asia, where she would purchase textiles to service her interior design clients. On those trips, Twila would also purchase sarongs to wear at the beach during the summer months.

Java Wraps magazine ad promoting the brand’s stores on St. Croix, St. Thomas and St. Maarten. Photo Credit: Twila Wilson.

But she would not be in New York City for long. As fate would have it, on the recommendation of friends she’d met in the Big Apple who invited her to visit St. Croix, Twila eventually relocated to the island, after ruling out a move to Barbados because “St. Croix was so much better.” She has called St. Croix her home ever since.

“When I started wearing the sarongs in St. Croix, the people immediately got them,” she says, recalling how quickly interest seemed to grow in the garments. “The colors are not the same colors that you see everywhere printed, and batik is something special about it. It’s hard to explain, but you know it and the locals know it.”

And she’s right. For more than 20 years, Java Wraps dominated fashion retail on St. Croix and St. Thomas. Thinking back to that time and being careful not to sound “airy-fairy,” as she puts it, Twila says the batik fabric Java Wraps was made of is a “spiritual cloth.”

“To this day, I could be talking to someone who doesn’t know about Java Wraps, and if a local person around who overhears the conversation, very often they would step in and start explaining the process—‘Twila, we could mix all these prints, and it was fantastic,’” she says.

I personally remember owning a few Java Wraps pieces (second-hand) from my aunt throughout the ‘90s. Each item could be mixed and matched with other Java Wraps pieces because of the unique and complementary colors, patterns and prints that made the brand what it was.

“You could find this beautiful shade of fuchsia, and it would be a touch in one print, and it would be a bigger flower in another,” she says. “Once you got to know the fabric, we would mix them all the time.”

Making A Name for Itself

Java Wraps got its name the same way most legendary brands get theirs—throwing ideas out at friends and seeing what sticks. “So, I don’t want to call it [something else], it’s a wrap. And I’ve always loved the name java. Graphically, it’s beautiful. It was that simple.”

St. Croix graphic designer, Michael Baron, who Twila says was just starting out back then, soon designed the iconic Java Wraps logo, somehow ensuring that it would be blazed into the collective memories of Virgin Islanders far and wide.

The Java Wraps logo created by Michael Baron. Photo Credit: Twila Wilson.

Because her sarongs had created such a buzz on St. Croix, Twila put on a showcase that featured all of the antique sarongs and baskets she’d collected from her travels around the world. The show was held at the back of what is Levels nightclub today.

“We had bamboo ladders, and we put all of these sarongs up and the baskets,” she says. “I’m telling you, from the first moment, people came like crazy. And they loved to tie the knot and the tactile. There’s like thirteen different ways to tie a sarong. It was so much fun.”

She continues, “That’s what’s beautiful about St. Croix and the Caribbean, in general. People are open to beautiful things. Men and women.”

With the money she made from that first show, Twila returned to Indonesia and tapped her vast network of contacts in the region to purchase more sarongs. But she made some changes to the design of the prints with the goal of making them more “Caribbean,” she says.

Java Wraps magazine ad. Photo Credit: Twila Wilson

“If you know me, you know I’m not the type that’s going to be sewing at home, but my mother made me take Home Economics,” she remembers. “Right away, I made bikinis and men’s shirts at night from the sarongs.”

After one year of hand sewing items and four years of selling her creations out of a “tiny shack” in downtown Christiansted, she arranged to have Java Wraps merchandise made at small, home-based manufactures in Indonesia. The brand was steadily gaining in popularity and demand. She would eventually move operations into a retail space that represented its growth—the expansive storefront in Christiansted town that is Purple Papaya today.

A Strut Down Memory Lane: The Java Wraps Fashion Show
Those who were lucky enough to attend Java Wraps’ annual fashion shows was in for a treat.

“We had all local models and sometimes we would bring people from Puerto Rico,” Twila says. “This is how we would introduce the new lines for the coming year for the wholesale accounts. Buyers would come for one weekend and we would be able to show off St. Croix’s finest and then have this fashion show, and they were beautifully produced.”

Another reason Java Wraps was and still is so loved, Twila says, is that “everybody had a family member that worked there or knew someone who was a model.” At one point, she employed upwards of 50 employees at Java Wraps stores on St. Croix and St. Thomas.

Java Wraps magazine ad promoting the brand’s store in Old San Juan, PR. Photo Credit: Twila Wilson.

“I didn’t have any idea of how big it was going to be. I absolutely loved where I was at, and who was buying it and the feedback that I got,” she says. “I loved being here [in St. Croix] and I loved the response I was getting. I was given the confidence and the information to keep going, and it turned out to be something really special.”

But Twila is keen to praise the hard work of her former employees, crediting them for the enormous success of the brand.

“I absolutely love teamwork. I love saying, ‘This is your job, and we all make each other look great. If we all pull this off at one shot, we’re going to win this thing’,” she explains. “That, for me, is what being in business is about. And I was able to pull that off. It was a great experiment right here [in St. Croix].”

Will There Be A Java Wraps 2.0?

As much as Twila would enjoy reviving the Java Wraps brand that has remained so near and dear to generations of Virgin Islanders, no plans are in the works for a Java Wraps 2.0.

“Here’s the hard part and the reality. We were talking about bringing it back and were moving in that direction, then real life stepped in and it’s the fact that batik now costs five times more than it did,” she explains.

Twila admits that while Java Wraps was an important client for the Indonesian artisans she worked with at the time, much of the country’s batik manufacturing business now comes from Middle Eastern customers willing to pay top dollar, causing manufacturing costs to skyrocket.

“I don’t fault [the manufacturers] a bit,” she says. “They should keep going.”

To put things into perspective, she explains that if she were “selling a men’s shirt for $75, which was a lot of money back then, are you going to do that five times [the amount now]? Nope.”

Twila is also a highly respected and sought-after interior designer through her Twila Wilson and Associates company, which she operates with her goddaughter and St. Croix businesswoman, Kobie Nichols. The business keeps them busy.

L to R: Java Wraps founder, Twila Wilson, shown with goddaughter and business partner, Kobie Nichols. Photo Credit: Twila Wilson

“You think I wouldn’t love to get on that plane and see all my old friends, and now their grandchildren,” she laughs. “Believe me, I would love to do that and get it started again, but it’s the money and it’s a different market.”

Long before there were social media rules about online marketing, algorithms, and influencers, there was plain old grit and fearlessness. That’s how Twila built Java Wraps. She offers some advice to young entrepreneurs building their own brands.

“My secret to success is I’m not afraid if I fail,” she says. “I can pick it back up and adjust. I don’t take it personally if I fail. Be flexible, be very hard working, but at the same time, have joy—don’t do it if you don’t have joy.”

The longtime businesswoman also says entrepreneurs shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help when they need it. “And don’t be mad if they can’t help you. Move to the next person. If something doesn’t go right, move on to the next thing,” she says.

For us Java Wraps fans, when it comes to hoping for a revival of the brand, we’re not quite ready to move on just yet. But if you’re looking for something to quench your thirst for beautiful batik in the meantime, you’ll find sarongs and pillowcases at the Enso Indigo home goods store in Gallows Bay.

That said, I’m still holding out hope for a Java Wraps 2.0 sometime in the future.