Ramon Puig Guayaberas

Southwest Miami Location - 5840 SW 8th St Miami FL 33144

Store Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00am-7:00p, Sun 10:00am-4:00pm

The roots of the guayabera can be traced back to the beginning of the 18th century to the province of Sancti Spíritus, Cuba. Local legend describes that an Andalusian immigrant, one José Gonzaléz, asked his wife, Encarnación, to tailor him a long-sleeved white linen shirt, with four large pockets so that he could carry his cigars, writing instruments, handkerchief, and "otras cositas" (other small things) during the course of his working day. The elegance and overall practicality of the shirt caught on with the local "guayaberos" (the farmers of the local guayaba crop), who then filled the lower pockets with the guayaba fruit, and thus it was soon baptized the "guayabera".

Almost two hundred and fifty years later, Ramon Puig opened his first guayabera store in 1943, in the ancestral home of the garment, Sancti Espiritus, in the city of his birth, Zaza del Medio. Since he was a child, Puig showed an interest in tailoring, and was extremely selective about the style and fit of clothing he would wear. If it was not up to his standards, he absolutely refused to wear it, much to his mother's chagrin. As he grew up, he learned and developed his skills under a local tailor, and opened up his first shop at the age of twenty-three. Soon after, he married a local woman, Juana María, and taught her the skills he had developed so she could assist him in his burgeoning business.

His attention to detail, cut, and style soon led customers all over Cuba to term him "el mago de guayabera" (The Guayabera Magician), as the shirts, made of crisp white linen, slimmed customers' waistlines and added to their appearance an aura of elegance. As his reputation grew, Puig often drove to the major cities all around Cuba to take the client's measurements, and then made the return trip to personally deliver his guayaberas. Puig recalled that in those pioneering days, that "everyone dressed in tailor-made garments, even the underwear was made of linen!".

Unfortunately, the winds of political change swept Cuba as time went on. In the 1960s, Puig became disillusioned with the path of his homeland, and made the difficult decision to leave Cuba. In retaliation for his views and decision to emigrate, Puig was sentenced to cut sugarcane for a year and a half before he was permitted to leave. Eventually in 1968, Puig departed the country and arrived in Miami, with a sick Juana María and an eight-year old son, Louis, in tow. Due to the seizure of his assets in Cuba by the Castro regime, Puig landed in Miami with no materials, tools, and money. For many years, he worked many hours cleaning hotels and sewing garments in a factory for a pittance, assiduously saving his money so he could restart his business in the United States.

Finally in 1971 Puig was able to open his first shop in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood, next to the popular Versailles restaurant on Calle Ocho, which was conveniently the meeting place for other Cuban exiles like himself. Rapidly making connections in Miami's Cuban and Latin community, he built his business into an international success. Celebrities such as Robert Duval, Sylvester Stallone, and Andy Garcia, as well as every US President since Ronald Reagan began sporting Puig's authentic guayaberas. With this astonishing success, Puig moved his facilities further west to it's current location, to provide more parking and showroom space for his rapidly-expanding client base.

As a result of this, and especially when Ronald Reagan himself toured Miami wearing Puig's garments, "el mago de guayaberas" was rechristened "el rey de guayaberas", a title which persists to the present day.

Due to the precision folds, cuts, and attention to detail, the Ramon Puig Guayabera has become known as a cool, comfortable, and versatile garment, suitable for business meetings, social gatherings, family events, and daily casual wear. Steeped in the traditions of their ancestral homelands, the younger Miami generation, always on the cutting-edge of fashion, has recently adopted Puig's authentic garments as the style for their social activities, including nights out on the town at Miami's hottest nightclubs, and even as a fashion for marriage ceremonies, with "guayabera weddings" becoming the recent rage in the matrimonial scene.

This uptake of the guayabera into the fashion world has led GQ Magazine to proclaim Ramon Puig "the master of the guayabera" and the "greatest guayabera maker". Many have tried to copy the garment with cheaply-made, mass-produced imitations, but the true fashion connoisseurs are not fooled, and insist on an authentic Ramon Puig guayabera. The quality, timeless design, and utility of this garment were bought to this country by Ramon Puig, and one can only be assured of it's authenticity by looking for the Ramon Puig Guayaberas mark. Ramon Puig stated it best, "You wouldn't smoke fake Cubans (cigars) so why would you wear a bogus guayabera?"