The Almy company (http://www.almy.com/) makes what they call a Panama shirt. I would call it a guayabera (as would a Phillipine). Unless I remember wrongly, the difference between a Panama shirt and a Guayabera is that the Guayabera has two lower pockets while the Panama shirt does not.
However, and this is yet another small point, it is not a Cuban guayabera. A Cuban guayabera has two pleats down the front, and generally three in the rear. It may also have some embroidery on the pleats. Yes, these are picayune points, but I really wish that someone made Cuban clerical guayaberas. I have found these plain types, and a Catholic store sells the true Panama clerical shirt. But, I have found no one that sells the Cuban version.
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Try these people
http://www.cuba.anglican.org/
They were always a good source for such things back in the day.
Well, I tried them but not one link to anything resembling church supplies or clerical gear.
Hey,
I have been searching high and low. I hate those “panama shirts” that Almy sells. They’re dreadful. Like wearing a black cotton sack with pockets and a clerical collar. I want a real quayabera, with pleats and embroidery and made from the right kind of light cotton or linen – as opposed to the stiff, starchy blend that Almy provides. But I have found nothing like it.
So here’s what I’ve done:
I bought some nice guayabera’s from a local shop and then took them along with my tab collar clergy shirt to a tailor and had them adapt the guayabera collar to take the tab from my “regular” clergy shirts. Worked like a charm. There is enough material in the normal guayabera collar to adapt it to take the tab and it looks like it was made as a clergy shirt. Of course, the buttons aren’t covered as in most clergy shirts, but my whole hope was to create a casual and comfortable and informal clergy shirt. A point that Almy seems to have missed.
Wow! That is an excellent, simple, and elegant suggestion. Thank you very much!
Any luck finding a regular mail order supplier of the real thing? No place to even buy a non-clerical guayabera in our area, nor are there any tailor shops here. Thank you.
Almy is the only one that makes the product, and it is the one in the picture above.