Options Growing for Fashionable Short Men
 

If petite women have had problems finding clothes in the past, what about short men? "I used to try finding clothes in the boys' department," said Joe Manson, 5 feet 5 inches tall and an insurance salesman. "I have to wear suits to work, and it was impossible to find anything that looked right." Mich Matsudaira, 5 feet 6 inches tall, dreamed of owning a corduroy sport coat and a trench coat. He didn't find them for years, until he quit his job as head of the Washington State Commission on Asian-American Affairs and opened Mich's Short and Small Shop in 1977. "I didn't know anything about the clothing business, just what I couldn't find," he said. Finding stock was the biggest problem. Manufacturers neglected statistics from the National Center for Health showing that 25 percent of the men in the United States are 5 feet 7 inches tall or under (The average is 5 feet 9 inches) Matsudaira heard of a few businesses across the country catering to short men, and several of them banded together in 1980 to form the Short Men's Apparel Association of America. "It's an informal group of retailers that got together to try to gain some clout by combining forces. We figured that if we could get enough volume, we would have more buying power." THEIR GOAL was to gel manufacturers to re-proportion suits for short men and give them the same style and fabrication that is available to regular-Size men. Why can't clothes for small men just be altered down from regular sizes? Ties are too long and are out of proportion when altered. Socks are too long. Belts are seldom short enough. Shirt sleeves are too long. The cuff also needs to be balanced. Trousers are too long. If there is any shape to the legs, it is cut off when they are shortened. It is hard to keep the pockets from ending up too far back. Crotches are too long. Boys' clothes are too small through the shoulders. Men have bigger biceps. Members of SMAA have had considerable success in persuading manufacturers to add short men's clothes to their lines, but there still are problems. Some manufacturers drop out. Oscar de la Renla quit making men's shirts. Yves St. Laurent stopped making short men's clothes but is coming back. Givenchy Tallia and Charles Jourdan still are manufacturing clothes for short men and so is Palm Beach. "SHORT MEN'S sizes are run at the end of regular sizes, so we cannot reorder a piece if we run out," said Matsudaira. "And if the manufacturer runs out of fabric on the regular run, it's just too bad for us “Matsudaira said short men are not adventuresome in trying new styles. "They don't want to be the first to wear something. When shirts with white collars and colored bodies came in, it was a couple of years before they would wear them. The same thing happened with pleated pants." But because of the work of Matsudaira and his colleagues in SMAA, short men are finding more variety in choices. There are 75 to 80 manufacturers who make clothing for them. Customers come from as far south as California and as far north as Vancouver, B.C., to replenish their wardrobes at Mich's Short and Small Shop. For a long time, short men got short shrift when it came to buying clothes. The problem isn't solved, but it's improving.

By Marilyn Kirkby
For Seattle Times
Syracuse Herald-Journal
March 29th, 1989

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