Under the fan in the Yucatan: Fashion

Older Yucatecans dress quite conservatively.  The women usually wear the traditional huipil (wee-peel) which is a loose cotton dress with short or cap sleeveless with profuse colorful embroidery around the top and bottom.  They are traditionally white but are now available in black and some other colors which look better on gringas.  Outdoors, huipils are usually worn with a narrow shawl/scarf which seems to have minimal function.  When an older Senora gets dressed up she adds a half-slip with a wide lace edge which peeks out from under the huipil by as much as a foot.  Dressier huipils have two wide rows of embroidery around the bottom and the top often has a large sailor-style collar covered with embroidery.  These dresses can be quite heavy because the embroidery adds a lot of weight.

Mexican men always wear pants (with the possible exception of going to the beach) and shirts (usually short-sleeved).  A popular Yucatecan souvenir is the "guayaberra" (g-why-a-bear-a) which is a short-sleeved dress shirt made of cotton or linen and worn hanging loose.  They feature two or four pockets and sections of tiny pleats down the front and back as well as embroidery and buttons in the same color as the shirt.  They take the place of suits in this hot climate and Mexican men usually wear white ones although fair skinned gringos often look better in off-white and other pastel colors.  Apparently these shirts were made in Cuba until the revolution when Yucatecans had to start making their own.  They are for sale EVERYWHERE in myriad colors and a huge range of prices.

Younger folk are also by and large a modest lot.  They don't show a lot of skin but they sure like their clothes tight.  And the official uniform of all Meridanas under fifty is jeans, very stretchy jeans.  They must be hot!  Ninety percent of Yucatecan women are overweight but the reverse is true of the men.  (I guess Mother Nature knows who will be taking care of the ninos in case of famine and it won't be those skinny little guys.)  Latina women are indeed built like J Lo, i.e. wide curvy bums and relatively flat chested.  Colorful padded bras are for sale on every street corner downtown like flipflops.  (In fact, from my own experience, it is a challenge to find one that isn't padded even in department stores.)  Meridanos don't show a lot of skin but they don't let a little thing like overflowing rolls and curves get in the way of wearing skin-tight tops with their skin-tight jeans.

Shoes!  Young Meridanas are crazy about shoes which may be why there appears to be about 10,000 pairs available for every man, woman and child in the city.  And they like them HIGH!  Only the elderly, children and touristas wear sensible shoes.  Six inch heels are relatively common.  And these are people who walk a lot!  The Mayan blood produces some very short people and it's not uncommon to see women barely more than four feet tall so the killer shoes are probably partly due to a yearning for height.

However, another major factor in Yucatecan fashion is sexiness.  The grotesquely baggy jeans never caught on here because they just don't look sexy and young latinos definitely want to look sexy.  While they don't wear them as tight as the girls, they do wear them about the same as northerners did in the 60s and 70s.
Yucatecans are always well groomed.  The vast majority of women and girls wear their hair long and usually done up.  The vast majority of men and boys wear their hair short and freshly trimmed.  It seems that all the women here, even the poorest, have gel nails!  Natural nails here are akin to leaving your hair grey.  I'm sure they think us gringas are total slobs.

The uniform of most construction workers is rolled up jeans and flipflops or no shoes at all.  They also seldom wear hats and have no work gloves.  Skin is cheap and many of these labourers earn as little as $10 per day.

The younger the person the more northern the clothing.  Children are precious and well cared for by all appearances.  They tend to be dressed in the standard department store options but little ninas are often dolled up like their mothers and occasionally sport a huipil style blouse.

While the Panama hat is a very popular tourist souvenir, most urban Yucatecans don't wear hats and if they do it's a ball cap.  Farm workers tend to wear henequen hats but with a wider brim.  By the way, ALL hats are "sombreros" which is the Spanish word for just about anything worn on your head with a brim.