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Short Guys Get Short Shrift When it Comes to
Fashion
French emperor Napoleon I stood at 5 feet 2 inches. Actor Danny
DeVito is 5 feet tall. And sex symbol actor Tom Cruise — married
to 6-foot-tall Nicole Kidman — hovers at 5-fooi-9. Men come in
all sizes and shapes. But when it comes to shopping for their
clothes, short guys have a long way to go. Most towns have
plenty of shops for tall and big men, and for short (petite)
women, but not that many — if any — for short men. They often
have to travel to reach shops specializing in clothing to fit
their size needs, or order from catalogs. Today, the average
height for men is 5 feet 10 inches; for women, it's 5 feet 4
inches. Often local department stores do carry short sizes for
men, but supplies are generally limited.
 Most
short men's apparel stores are on the West Coast. There are few
mail-order houses specializing in clothing for short men. Some
men choose to have their clothes custom made, a costly option.
"There's some denial out there — a lot of (short men) are
wearing their clothes wrong," says Dave Wittmer, owner of a
Seattle-based short men's shop named Wallaby Station. "They're
saying, I don't have a problem,' and the crotch of their pants
is down to their knees." Wittmer is president of the Short Men's
Apparel Association, a national retail business\group of about
20 members founded in the late 1970s. The difference between
regular sizes and short sizes is in cut and proportion, experts
say. Short men's sizes are usually broken do\\n this way: Suits
run in sizes 35 extra short (5-foot-3 and under) to a 54 portly
short. Dress shins run from about a 14-2-inch neck/30 sleeve to
a 17'/2-inch neck/32 sleeve length. Labels in short men's
clothes run the gamut from small to short, to LS (large short),
SXL (short extra-large), LS (large short), MS (medium short), or
SS (small short) or PS (portly short). The general belief in the
short menswear industry is that many short men are not as
comfortable as petite women are when it comes to shopping for
clothes to fit them. Owners of short men's clothing stores say
they save men the embarrassment of having to shop in the teen
boy's department for a correct size. Most of the clothing is
more moderately priced, and doesn't need to be altered.
By Rhonda B. Seweil
The Toledo Blade
Syracuse Herald-Journal
September 25th, 1996
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