Guayabera Girl | La Chica de las Guayaberas
"A woman running her family's guayabera shop finds love in a customer who keeps coming back for alterations"
Guayabera Girl
La Chica de las Guayaberas
My family had sold guayaberas in Little Havana for sixty years. I was the last generation.
"I need this altered," she said, holding up a white guayabera too big for her frame.
"This is a men's shirt."
"It was my father's. I want to wear it."
Her name was Victoria, and her father had passed wearing this very guayabera.
"I can make it fit," I promised. "It won't lose his shape. Just gain yours."
"You understand."
"I understand clothes carry souls."
She came back for the fitting. The guayabera draped perfectly now—her father's shoulders become her own.
"I can feel him," she whispered.
"Good. That's what it should do."
She returned for other things. A guayabera of her own. Then another. Then accessories.
"You don't need this many," I observed.
"I need to come here."
"Why?"
"Because you make me feel close to him. And close to something else."
I kissed her in the fitting room, surrounded by guayaberas waiting for their owners.
"This is unprofessional," she murmured.
"This is human."
"Same thing?"
"The best things are both."
She started helping in the shop. Learning to sew, to alter, to honor the tradition.
"Your father would approve," I said.
"Of the guayaberas or of you?"
"Both, I hope."
We run the shop together now. Sixty-one years of guayaberas, one year of us.
"To tradition," we toast.
"To what tradition becomes," she adds.
Guayabera girl—where clothes carry history, and love fits perfectly.