During the Opening Ceremony of the Paris Summer Olympics last month, Team Haiti turned heads as it floated down the Seine clad in uniforms created by Haitian-Italian designer Stella Jean. While the colorful ensembles earned high marks from head-to-toe , it was the male athletes’ powder-blue guayabera jackets that truly stole the show. There’s a case to be made that the multi-pocketed garment, previously associated with old men in straw hats across the former Spanish Empire, is now truly entering the mainstream, with American retailers from Brooks Brothers to Ralph Lauren stocking their own iterations.
Tweedy English shirtmaker Drake’s , best-known for its oxford-cloth button-downs, has even joined the fray. “We kept true to the formula: a loose fit, four-pocket front, a straight hemline. But we did away with the embroidery, swapped the camp collar for a spread one, and topped things off with our fish-eye mother of pearl buttons—an updated take on a high summer staple,” Drake’s creative director Michael Hill says of the label’s guayabera-inspired Cuban shirt.
Fayad & Co . founder Andre Fayad, whose Miami-based business does a brisk trade in bespoke guayaberas , likens the style ’s current position to where the Western shirt had been several seasons ago. “Look at where Western shirts are now,” he tells Robb Report.
“You didn’t see that before and now they’re everywhere.” But with the style’s raised profile comes questions of authenticity. In Fayad’s view, a true guayabera must be more than “slapping four pockets on a shirt.
” He points to the presence of either pleating or embroidery (the latter being more common to Mexico), purely decorative details in keeping with the style’s origins as a suiting alternative for lawyers and administrators in Spain’s New World colonies. “It was a pivot to looking formal without wearing a suit,” says Fayad, who often sells long-sleeved, white linen guayaberas as wedding attire. “You’re not just showing up with a shirt—you’re showing up with something that has a little bit more thought to it.
That’s how I approach it.” Conscious of its elevated connotations, some designers have sought to make more casual versions. This includes Angel Ramos , whose linen Mariano Cigar shirt —named for his grandfather—dispenses with the extra decoration and features larger lower pockets that better accommodate a stick or two.
“It’s our interpretation of a guayabera without being a guayabera,” Ramos explains. “In Latin culture, a guayabera is very formal. It’s what you wear to a wedding.
.. you typically don’t wear a guayabera as a casual thing, because it just looks a bit off.
And so, I wanted to have that same kind of playful inspiration yet have something you’d wear with a pair of swim trunks or trousers.” The Atlanta-based retailer Sid Mashburn stocks both a guayabera shirt and a guayabera-adjacent “minimal riff” dubbed the Marquez , which features four pockets but no decorative details. And though the label’s guayabera is more traditional in appearance—right down to the hem pockets that can be found in a black-and-white photo of Gary Cooper wearing the style—the designer is transparent about its breaks with convention.
“Some purists may not be so into our version...
we’ve taken some liberties,” Mashburn tells Robb Report. “For instance, ours doesn’t have the decorative embroidery that some guys love, and it fits a bit closer to the body than some—it’s relaxed but not oversized. I love the traditional ones too; it’s just not what we make.
” While donning a conventional guayabera could make the wearer unknowingly overdressed, the style carries other pratfalls, too. Fayad often dissuades clients from ordering white linen iterations with short sleeves for a very particular reason. “Walk down Lincoln road,” he says, referring to the restaurant-heavy strip in Miami’s South Beach neighborhood, “and all the waiters are wearing white linen guayaberas with short sleeves.
It has become like the white dinner jacket for restaurants, and sometimes you don’t want to do that.” Instead, Fayad points patrons toward more creative commissions, like a charcoal linen guayabera that might be worn in the evening with a lighter-colored trouser. Styling-wise, He’s also had clients request guayaberas with a shorter hem, or even concealed button plackets for a sleeker look.
“I’m always open to traditional with a little bit of a twist or making it your own,” he says. If the guayabera is indeed on the same trajectory as the Western shirt, we’re likely to see it in many new cuts, colors, and fabrications in the years to come. Just don’t forget where the style came from—and try not to look as if you’ve strayed from a wedding reception.
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