For the second year running, shops in Palma de Mallorca have the same problem: there are no guayaberas. They have been sold out for over a month, and retailers admit restocking is close to an impossible mission. The reason is not a marketing campaign, nor an influencer with a million followers. The reason is one man who wore one to the summer reception at Marivent.

King Felipe VI does not try to create trends, and that is exactly why he succeeds. Tatler magazine named him the best-dressed member of the world's royal families, and fashion watchers note that in recent years he has deliberately moved towards a more relaxed but equally precise style. A white or pale blue shirt, dark trousers, nothing that shouts. He wore the same white guayabera on his visit to Cuba in 2019.

The shirt has a longer biography than any of the people wearing it today.

The guayabera comes from Cuba and the countries of Latin America, though one interpretation also links it to Filipino influence. It is made from cotton or linen, has four pockets and two vertical pleats down the front. The first documented traces lead back to the nineteenth century, and there are several versions of its origin - one credits the invention to a farmer's wife, who wanted her husband to have somewhere to put small items while working in the fields.

That is the entire point of the cut. A shirt you do not tuck in, that needs no belt, does not cling to the body and has pockets that actually serve a purpose. It was made for heat and outdoor work, a context far closer to a Balkan summer than to a royal reception in Mallorca.

Every summer the fashion industry sells us "the new piece you cannot go anywhere without", and almost always it is something some working class was wearing a decade earlier. This time at least the history is known and nobody is pretending they designed something out of nothing.

The question is a different one. Will you pay two hundred euros for a cut that has been sewn for decades in our own tailors' workshops too, simply because a king wore it in front of the cameras? The summer passes, the shirt remains. At least this linen one will outlast the trend that brought it back.