The Pāʻia Sugar Mill finally closed in 2000, ending the era that started it all — but the town it left behind, home to only a couple thousand residents, is thriving on its own terms: a beloved, low-key surf-and-art town where windward surf culture and upcountry ranching mingle and, rare on Maui, it all still feels like old Maui. Our Pāʻia designs gather that spirit into wearable form. Pāʻia — Maui's bohemian sugar town, where the trade winds blow and the road to Hāna begins.
That culture was a blend. The plantation camps gathered families from across the Pacific, each adding its food, faith and festivals to the mix that still flavors Pāʻia today. In 1906 the community raised the seaside Mantokuji Soto Zen Mission, a Buddhist temple whose summer Bon Dance still lights the shore each year. Up and down Baldwin Avenue, the false-front wooden storefronts of the plantation era went up — the same buildings, weathered and repainted, that give the town its look a century later.
Why People Visit Pāʻia
Pāʻia offers a whole mood in one small town: bohemian, barefoot charm, world-class wind and surf, and the romance of the open road to Hāna. It is the coolest little town on Maui — and for the artists, surfers and free spirits who live here, simply home, the place where old Maui still feels like itself.
