Design
The guayabera shirt is distinguished by several details: either two or four patch pockets and two vertical rows of alforzas (fine, tiny pleats, usually 10, sewn closely together) running along the front and back of the shirt. The pockets are separately detailed with identical, properly aligned alforzas.
The top of each pocket is usually adorned with a matching shirt button, as are the bottoms of the alforza pleats. Vertical rows of adjusting buttons are often seen, one on each side, at the bottom hem. While most versions of the design have no placket covering the buttons, a few newer designs do.
The bottom of many shirts has three-inch slits on either side, and these include adjusting buttons. The bottom has a straight hem, thus it is not tucked into the trousers.
Though traditionally worn in white and pastels, guayaberas are now available in many solid (and loud) colors. Black guayaberas, embroidered with colorful flowers and festooned with French cuffs, have for many decades been extremely popular in Mexico. In Mexico, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Cuba, guayaberas are part of the traditional wear for men.
In Zimbabwe, the short sleeve version is worn for special occasions. The shirt was brought to Africa by Cuban teachers who once lived there. Today, it has replaced the safari suit for special occasions. White shirts are worn with black dress pants to weddings, and black shirts are worn to funerals.
The guayabera is worn as office and loose formal wear all over the world. In Zimbabwe and Britain the guayabera is called a Safari shirt. In Jamaica it is known as a bush jacket; in the United States, Trinidad and Guyana, a type of guayabera (similar to a safari shirt) is sometimes called a shirt-jac; in the Dominican Republic it is known as chacabana.
The shirt-jac (also known as a "jac" for short, or a "summer jac") has become a popular clergy shirt in the last thirty years. These shirts are simpler than a guayabera, avoiding the design details such as pleats. Many clerics purchase fine guayabera shirts and have the collars re-tailored into clergy collars.
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Famous quotes containing the word design:
“Delay always breeds danger; and to protract a great design is often to ruin it.”
—Miguel De Cervantes (1547–1616)
“With wonderful art he grinds into paint for his picture all his moods and experiences, so that all his forces may be brought to the encounter. Apparently writing without a particular design or responsibility, setting down his soliloquies from time to time, taking advantage of all his humors, when at length the hour comes to declare himself, he puts down in plain English, without quotation marks, what he, Thomas Carlyle, is ready to defend in the face of the world.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To nourish children and raise them against odds is in any time, any place, more valuable than to fix bolts in cars or design nuclear weapons.”
—Marilyn French (20th century)