Among the great tailors who came to Florida with the Cuban exodus none left a bigger legend than Pepe, who died in 1987. His tradition is kept alive today by his son, Christian Garcia, 57, whose tailor shop in Coral Gables maintains the most meticulous standards of the craft.
Working with name fabrics such as Loro Piana and Ermenegildo Zegna, Christian’s shop makes custom-tailored suits of an updated English cut. After cutting patterns from the customer’s measurements, he makes an initial garment of a working cloth called toile, usually of a color and weight similar to what the finished garment calls for, for the first fitting.
Corrections are made and the toile cloth is discarded as the suit’s actual cloth is cut and the customer returns for two more fittings. Everything is handmade in the shop, and when the suit requires cleaning the shop handles that, too, first removing the buttons. “You don’t send a suit like that to the dry cleaners,” explains Christian. Such attention to detail costs. Christian Garcia’s suits start at $2,500. His shop also makes shirts and even ties.
Christian’s grandfather, a Spaniard living in Cuba, was a tailor who cut suits for army officers. The Spanish tailor’s two daughters became seamstresses and his son Pepe a tailor. Christian’s sister runs a women’s shop of custom-made fashions downstairs from the tailor shop.
Actually, Christian was studying architecture when the Cuban revolution forced his family to move to Miami. In the United States he studied fine arts at night while learning tailoring in his father’s shop.
One thing neither Pepe nor his son cared much for was nostalgic Cuban garments such as the guayabera or the white-linen “Drill 100” suits. The latter, says Christian disdainfully, “was a rag.” As for guayaberas, they don’t flatter most men because you need an athletic build to wear one well. “My father never wore them. He was too avant-garde.”
Sure enough, a photo from the ’40s of the young Pepe shows a handsome man at a beach resort, wearing loose pants and a close-fitting, striped Italian T-shirt with radically short sleeves, hipper than anything in South Beach today.
Still, guayabera fever has struck Christian’s clientele, and he is now making them, is even thinking of wearing one himself. On a table in the showroom lies a white guayabera of heartbreakingly soft linen.
The fabric and workmanship of the suits waiting to be picked up by his customers are equally daunting. “You don’t find this kind of work today even in Europe,” says Christian. And his voice registers neither hype nor pride, but the wistfulness of being among the last of a fading art.
