Bad Bunny’s Guayabera Outfit Is a Potent Expression of His Puerto Rican Identity

Bad Bunny’s feat since releasing his sixth studio album, Debí Tirar Más Fotos, has been nothing short of miraculous. Imbued with the sounds of his youth and cultural roots, the Puerto Rican star’s homerun success has propelled the archipelago’s folkloric rhythms of plena, salsa, reggaetón, and trova to the top of the global charts. He’s also been everywhere: serving as a co-anchor at a morning news show in Puerto Rico; co-hosting Tonight with Jimmy Fallon; and delivering a parranda, the Puerto Rica version of caroling, with Congresswomen Nydia Velasquez and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the famed Caribbean Social Club in Brooklyn. Much like the album, Bad Bunny’s outfits have spoken volumes about the man behind the global megastar persona: another 30-year-old Puerto Rican millennial trying to find his way back home.

No outfit is as evidential as the shirt style he chose to wear during some of his press cycle stops. At the historic Casa de la Música in Cayey, Puerto Rico, he hosted an unofficial listening party the day the album dropped this month. There, he wore a white guayabera shirt stitched with the silhouette of the Morro—a Spanish fort in Old San Juan—and palm trees. A few days later, at a Spotify event where he also hosted a dominoes competition, the singer showed up in a light green guayabera.

To the naked eye, it may seem like just another outfit. But for Mailye Matos, who teaches a fashion criticism and history course at the University of Puerto Rico, it’s a garment that embodies Bad Bunny’s—and his generation’s—continued commitment to asserting Puerto Rican identity. “It represents a desire to not lose our traditions and what’s ours,” she says.

On Debí Tirar Más Fotos, Bad Bunny exerts just that: a yearning to claim and protect the sonic and cultural folklore of his homeland in the face of mass displacement, a decades-long financial crisis, and crude political corruption. For the past year, he started building that persona, not just as a marketing ploy for the album, but as just another citizen who cares. He antagonized the archipelago’s ruling party, the New Progressive Party, with billboards (“A vote for PNP is a vote for corruption,” some read) and endorsed the newly formed Alianza, a coalition of minority parties that made historic advances for left-leaning and pro-independence candidates in the November elections. (Puerto Rico's government has been ruled by the New Progressive Party since 2017, including the current governor, Jenniffer González.) He’s also used clothes to make a statement. When he voted in the November elections in Puerto Rico (Puerto Ricans hold local elections on the same cycle as the United States, but can't vote for president), he did so wearing a sky blue shirt and red pants, two of the colors of the Puerto Rican flag.

Wearing a guayabera to promote DTMF is right on par with that type of sartorial performance, especially considering its history. According to Matos, there’s no exact known origin for guayaberas. “I always tell my students to pick whatever version [of the origin story] they please,” she says. While some historical versions link them to the Philippines, others assert they were first created in Cuba or Mexico. But what’s constant is their design: a linen or cotton shirt made with four frontal pockets and 10 to 14 vertical pleats. Though it was long known as a staple of countryside peasants, their use has evolved to become the shirt of choice for formal events in the Caribbean, including political rallies and weddings, usually relegated to older generations. Matos also highlights that many pro-independence political figures in Puerto Rico, including Juan Mari Bras, the only-ever Puerto Rican citizen following his renouncing of American citizenship—and Rubén Berríos, the former president of the Pro-Independence Party.

$240 at yayiperez.com

There’s even more meaning embedded in the exact guayabera Bad Bunny wore. Custom-made by Puerto Rican designer Yayi Pérez, the guayabera he wore at the Spotify event is named “Martí,” after José Martí, a philosopher and poet who played an important role in the independence of Cuba. Pérez, a graduate of the Fashion Institute of Technology, first got the idea to revive the traditional guayabera when she was tasked with creating a button-down shirt at school. When she returned to Puerto Rico, Pérez launched her brand as a womenswear label but quickly spotted an untapped market for locally-made menswear. The guayabera, which is made from the same materials she works with, proved a successful first attempt. It was also aligned with her brand ethos—to modernize traditional Caribbean garments. Currently, Pérez is operating her first-ever brick-and-mortar shop, which she branded the “guayabera shop.” There, customers can both shop off-the-rack—some feature stitched Puerto Rican motifs, like the “Morro,” worn by Bad Bunny—or customize their own.

Matos highlights Pérez’s brand as one example of a wider phenomenon brewing on the archipelago, with Puerto Rican artists—like Bad Bunny and other local musicians, architects, fashion designers, and more—asserting their traditions and folklore through their craft. “If you look at the artists that are having success at home, the recurring themes are associated with this need to rescue what we’re losing,” she says. By wearing a guayabera, Bad Bunny made that all the more visible, coupled with an album that confronts the past, present, and future of Puerto Rico. And that future is styled in guayaberas. 

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