The time of the guayabera is here.

That four-pocket man’s shirt, with its vertical tucks and its virile fit, is practically a uniform for older men in Latino barrios, like Miami’s Little Havana. But for young Miami Cubans it has been what the old man and his buddies wore when they sat around talking about Cuban politics and how things here were not as good as they were back home. Non-Latino young dudes saw the guayabera as too ethnic, tacky even.

Until recently. Signs of a guayabera revival began to surface a few years ago.

At Nemo’s, the great South Beach restaurant frequented by visiting celebs, the staff wear them. Miami’s Cuban-American rock star, Nil Lara, invented a look to fit his fusion music: guayabera, jeans and bare feet. And more and more yucas (Cuban yuppies) are dishing out the cash for a top-of-the-line guayabera, the perfect garment for that ultimate yuppie activity, smoking top-of-the-line cigars.

“They’re very in-style now. All the young guys are wearing them,” says Forrest Daniel, head of sales at Base, [716 Lincoln Road Miami Beach. 305 672-0101], an understated yet trendy South Beach boutique. “The guayabera is our best-selling shirt for men,” he says, adding that the store ships a lot of them to out-of-town customers who want that “very Miami flavor.”

Base carries the cotton-blend, short-sleeve guayaberas that are a staple in Latin neighborhoods, as well as a version of the more formal shirt in linen, designed by the store’s own Stephen Giles, a Londoner. These come in short sleeve ($85) and long sleeve ($95) in both white and light gray.

The common and elegant guayaberas at Base are indicative of the two styles that have taken over men’s fashion. The cotton-blend guayaberas are precisely the reason young people thought the shirts were tacky. After all, that’s what you get in cheap barrio stores or at the big discount outlets.

But youth has a way with tackiness. Let’s call it postmodernism. And today those guayaberas are worn locally with casual panache for a throwaway tropical look, often with shorts and sandals.

The upmarket guayaberas represent another trend: the quest for retro forms of elegance.

Either way, the guayabera makes a lot of sense for the hot weather seasons up north and year-round in subtropical South Florida. Before they were cool figuratively, guayaberas were cool literally.

The garment is probably descended from the Spanish military tunic, made from linen or cotton to help the wearer withstand the Caribbean heat. That it is worn outside the pants helps the air circulate. That it has four pockets makes the shirt do the work of a man’s jacket: a place to put those cigars, those keys, that parking-garage ticket, that cellular phone.

From peasant to palace

Although guayaberas are worn as regional garb in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and regions of Mexico and Colombia, and a lacy version is the national garment of the Philippines, the Cuban town of Sancti Spiritus boasts it is the birthplace of the guayabera.

According to Ramn Puig, owner of Miami’s guayabera emporium La Casa de la Guayabera [5840 SW 8th St., (305) 266-9683], the townsfolk were known as yayaberos because of the nearby Yayabo River. The citizens of Trinidad, a prosperous and sophisticated city in the 19th century, would change the moniker maliciously to guayaberos, from the guava (guayaba) trees around Sancti Spiritus and the guava sweets the townsfolk would sell in Trinidad. The shirt those townsfolk wore, disdained as hicks’ clothing by Trinidad sophisticates, became known as guayabera. Soon, however, everyone in provincial Cuba was wearing it.

Puig’s own telling of guayabera history claims that it was Cuban exiles during the struggle of independence from Spain in the 19th century who carried the shirt to Yucatan, where it became the regional garment. What is obvious is that the guayabera traveled to the other countries of the Caribbean Basin, where it is still worn.

In Cuba itself, it continued as classic country wear — today one can still see old peasants on horseback wearing threadbare guayaberas left over from more affluent days. And the guayabera took the capital by storm, rivaling the white linen suit as standard Havana male gear. The guayabera’s ascent to sophistication came with the last constitutional president of Cuba, the very elegant Carlos Pro Socarras, who, in the ’50s, wore it as a substitute for the business suit in the Presidential Palace. The guayabera had arrived.

Ramn Puig lists as clients from the old days both Prio and the man who deposed him, Fulgencio Batista, as well as Cuban cabinet ministers and prominent industrialists. In 1968 Puig arrived in Miami as an exile and went to work at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach “washing dishes and scrubbing floors for $1 an hour.” He opened his first Casa de las Guayaberas next to Little Havana’s legendary Versailles coffee shop, where his reputation grew. For the past 13 years Puig has been at the present, larger locale several blocks west of Little Havana, where he stocks about 12,000 guayaberas of all types, colors and fabrics.

But his forte, which has earned him a clientele that includes American and Latin American presidents, remains the custom-made guayabera. This is a long-sleeved garment that is traditionally made in only two fabrics, Irish linen or Swiss cotton. The classic linen colors are white or an oatmeal hue called hacendado (estate owner), but Puig also makes them in gray and blue. Besides these, the cotton guayabera can be made in a very elegant striped cloth, not unlike that of business shirts. With French cuffs, the guayabera becomes even more formal, and many clients ask for initials on the shirtfronts or cuffs; a natty traditional touch is to top a guayabera with a bow tie.

Although Puig stocks $15 cotton-blend guayaberas, his trademark custom items run from $180 to $250. A guayabera shirtdress is gaining in popularity, custom made for about $300.

“Right now I am outfitting three weddings,” says Puig. “Everyone is wearing guayaberas — bride, groom, bridesmaids, ushers, everybody.”

His craft, however, is endangered. Puig has not found anyone who wishes to apprentice himself to learn the fine art of guayabera tailoring.

Mustard, olive and wine

Everything is off-the-rack at Guayaberas, Etc., [8870 SW 40th St. (Bird Road), Miami. 305-485-1114], a new Miami shop. However, owners Rene and Teresa La Villa are primarily in the wholesale business. Their company, which sells guayaberas to retailers, including Puig, began in 1992 when Teresa retired from Florida Power & Light.

At first, they bought inexpensive guayaberas in Asia. But Rene, who had studied marketing at Rutgers University, saw a niche for better products; in ’94, when NAFTA made it possible, they began trading with Mexico, where making fine guayaberas was a tradition.

The bulk of the business is still wholesale, but at their retail outlet, Guayaberas, Etc., customers can find a variety of guayaberas, and also linen shirts that are square cut and have side vents so they can be worn outside, guayabera-fashion.

La Villa, like Puig, sees a booming youth market. The hip look of the past two years, according to La Villa, is “a short-sleeve guayabera over a T-shirt or a ribbed undershirt.” Guayaberas, Etc., which stocks La Villa’s own brand, Renato Collezione, in the traditional colors and fabrics, also carries short-sleeve linen guayaberas in deep fashion hues like mustard, olive, wine, denim and, of course, black. There is also a microfiber long-sleeve guayabera in gray and red.

His more tradition-oriented customers frequently ask for monograms, as well as for a decorative touch: the Cuban coat of arms. His top guayaberas, made of Irish linen, retail for $100, while Chinese linen guayaberas sell for $60 and cotton ones for $45.

For many years, South Florida has been the guayabera center, catering to Cuban nostalgia, Latin tradition and American fascination with an exotic garment. This season, however, this local fashion is getting the imprimatur of national magazines like Cigar Aficionado and even of hot designers like John Bartlett.

No longer old-style, the guayabera is suddenly what it was made to be in the first place. Fresh.

Enrique Fernandez can be reached at or 954-356-4797.