The island also gave the world something joyful. At Waikākā, in the early twentieth century, the ancient Hawaiian art of heʻe nalu — wave-sliding — was carried into the modern age, above all by Duke Kahanamoku, Waikākā's Olympic swimmer and the father of modern surfing. Duke won Olympic gold in 1912 and 1920, and spent his life giving surfing demonstrations from California to Australia, becoming Hawaiʻi's great ambassador of aloha. On the North Shore, the open Pacific delivers the biggest rideable waves on earth along a famous seven-mile stretch, and winter names like Pipeline, Waimea and Sunset became the proving ground of big-wave surfing. From these shores the sport spread around the world — Oʻahu is where surfing, ancient and modern, belongs.
Today Oʻahu is Hawaiʻi's gathering place in full: the capital and the crowds, the surf and the city, home to roughly a million people and to the most blended culture in the islands, where nearly everyone's grandparents came from somewhere else and the food, festivals and music to match are part of daily life. It became the heart of the fiftieth state in 1959, and it remains where Hawaiʻi meets the world. Our Oʻahu designs gather that spirit into wearable form. Oʻahu — the Gathering Place, where Diamond Head watches over Hawaiʻi's beating heart.
Why People Visit Oʻahu
Oʻahu offers the whole of Hawaiʻi in one place: deep history and living culture, world-famous surf, a great multicultural city, and beaches for every mood. It is where most visitors begin — and, for the million people who live here, simply home, the island where Hawaiʻi gathers.
