A Modern Guayabera

Yazmin Perez, Fashion Design Milan ’14, Florence ’12

The guayabera is a traditional Caribbean men’s shirt with four pleated pockets. In Puerto Rico, they say farmers needed pockets to put different types of fruits in them. They also say it has four pockets because the farmers’ clothing was very worn, and they needed extra in case one broke. In Cuba, they say cigar makers put the cigars in the pockets.

Perez was inspired by Jack Delano photographs, like this one of an ox cart driver in Puerto Rico from 1942. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives.

After Hurricane Maria, I came back to Puerto Rico, where I was born and raised, to do product development for a friend’s apparel manufacturing startup. The idea was a little ambitious with the limited resources available, so I spent more time working on my own collections and building my brand, Yayi.

I studied women’s wear at FIT, but here, I saw a need for dressier menswear—most of the market for men is streetwear. It was a no-brainer to start designing guayaberas. Now we sell more menswear than women’s wear.

I modernized the guayabera with slash pockets instead of patch pockets. I also designed a classic version with a V-neck and camp collar. We use 100% linen imported from Europe, cut everything at the studio, and hire seamstresses to sew them in their home workrooms.

Last year, I opened a temporary store in Santurce, the San Juan neighborhood where I went to school, on a popular street with bars and restaurants and really good shops. We hosted a few pop-ups with other designers, and at one of them, a friend from before I went to FIT said he wanted to buy a shirt for someone special and give it to him on Three Kings Day. (In Puerto Rico, Three Kings Day is a second opportunity after Christmas to share gifts and an excuse to keep the festivities going.)

Following the success of the guayabera gift, Perez made eight shirts and four pairs of pants for Bad Bunny’s Puerto Rico residency this summer. He wore at least one in all 30 shows. Photo courtesy of Spotify.

I guessed who he was talking about—my friend is a photographer who tours with Bad Bunny. We made a custom guayabera in a color we hadn’t used before, Spring Green, with buttons made of real buffalo horn. Bad Bunny wore it to a release party for his new album in the same neighborhood where the store is. It was very exciting to see him wear the shirt! That’s the biggest compliment I could have gotten.

—As told to Jonathan Vatner