Short Shrifted

A few weeks back, I got excited about a cool-looking jacket in the upcoming Loden Dager collection for Uniqlo. I can’t be certain without trying one on, but judging from the web pix, it looks pretty darn short (even if the model is beanpole tall). So if you’re as curious about Loden’s bumfreezer as I am, cool. But please don’t freeze your ass off out there on the unseasonably cold SoHo sidewalk waiting for Uniqlo’s doors to open tomorrow morning. Originally slated to debut May 16, it’s been pushed back to May 30, according to Racked. So hold tight. If you feel the urge to blow part of your paycheck on something tomorrow, check out Steven Alan instead.

Steven Alan’s annual spring sample sale in Tribeca got underway today and continues through Sunday, May 18. Refinery 29 says, “Guys, be sure to pick up a bunch of Steven Alan’s own signature cotton button-downs (were $168, now $65).” If it’s anything like the fall sample sale I braved back in November, there will be plenty of long-sleeve buttondowns to choose from. Some of my impressions from that sale:

The short men swarming the aisles seemed mostly drawn to the shirts, no doubt because of those super-short hemlines (and the sizing: down to XXS). One important thing: I tried on three long-sleeve XXS shirts and they all fit differently. The biggest difference was in the sleeve lengths, which, unfortunately, were all a bit longer than I’d like. Hemlines were all nice and high, though, but they did vary. One of the salesgirls confirmed that there is a good deal of variation. So my advice is try on a bunch in your size.

Overall, it was worth it. I was able to find an XXS with short enough sleeves. Not to mention that beautifully high hem, cuffs that are two inches (about a 1/2 or even a full inch shorter than average), and smallish collars — it’s all about proportion.

Sale details from R29:

Friday, May 16 from 8:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday, May 17, from noon to 7 pm, Sunday, May 18, from noon to 5 p.m. Cash/credit cards. Steven Alan Showroom, 87 Franklin St. (between Church & Broadway), 212-219-3305.

Good hunting.

If you’re visiting this site from Candice Choi’s excellent AP feature story Size no longer stops short, stylish men, welcome.

I’m 5-foot-5, and have always had a tough time finding clothes that fit. After countless searches online for advice, I came to the conclusion that ye olde internette contained information on just about everything — except sharp threads for short dudes. I figured there were other people out there like me. So I started this blog. My goal is to connect you to the clothes, styles, stores, tailors, links and advice that best fit you.

You can check out previous entries in the Archives or Categories in the sidebar, but here’s a few of the most popular posts to get you started:

• My best short shopping experience of 2007
• Compare 55 brands of neckties by length and price with this PDF
• DIY: How to slim down a dress shirt
• Celebrity style: Jason Schwartzman
• How Thomas Pink makes a custom shirt

If you dig the site, please be aware that you can automate your devotion by subscribing. As always, please feel free to join the conversation and comment on any post or e-mail me with tips, questions or feedback.

Thanks for stopping by — and please visit again soon.

There’s a longstanding prohibition against short men cuffing their trousers. The idea being that you thereby interrupt the “lengthening” vertical line of your pants by a precious inch or two. Not bad advice, really. But would a similar problem arise for short men who wanted to cuff a pair of shorts? Last week, The Sartorialist snapped a photo of a natty beach bum in the South of France and mused:

I have been seeing cuffed shorts slowly popping up on cool guys around the world. I hate when my shorts flair out at the bottom and cuffing them is a good trick but it is one of those funny things about menswear - either you’re a shorts cuffer or you’re not.

I can’t tell whether the man pictured is short but it doesn’t really matter. I think cuffed shorts for shorter guys could really work. The main problem with shorts and the short is that they (surprisingly, given the name) don’t often go together very well these days. The current style favors long and/or baggy shorts. Nothing against that look, but it often ends up looking way too long on guys like us. Besides visually dragging us down, they can also make us look more kid-like sometimes, I think.

Cuffing a pair of shorts not only adds a subtle debonair flair to your casual summer wardrobe, but you fix the whole my-shorts-are-too-long issue while you’re at it. I think the Sartorialist is right, though. It’s a tricky business. You run the risk of looking like a dork is you do it wrong — or cuff the wrong pair of shorts.

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Speaking of shorter shorts, I spotted some likely contenders recently at H&M (16″) and French Connection (both of which also had a bunch of the too-long variety). Anyone know of any shorter shorts out there?

Common wisdom says all neckties are the same size. (And one size fits all.) But I compared 55 major tie brands and found that’s just not true. Over the last few months I’ve been tromping around NYC — cloth measuring tape in hand, pencil behind my ear, notebook rapidly filling up with figures, sales clerks eyeing me suspiciously — on a quest to compare men’s neckwear from Brooks Brothers to Old Navy, to see how Duncan Quinn stacks up against Thomas Pink, to quantify the difference between H&M and Ferragamo, Banana Republic and Armani.

The result of my painstaking research is Short Shrifted’s Necktie Guide. Click here to go to the Necktie Guide PDF download page.

I determined that neckties currently range from about 54 to 60 inches in length. That’s half a foot difference! It stands to reason that short men need shorter neckties and tall guys need extra-long neckties (although this may not always be the case). Ultimately, the correct tie length for you depends on many factors: your height, yes, but also your weight, neck size, what knots you use, your personal sense of style, and, well, just how high you like to hike your pants.

Whatever your requirements, you can find a tie that meets your needs in the PDF chart I’ve created.

Some conclusions:

• Neckties currently range from about 54-60 inches
• The average length of most brands is 57-59 inches
• Silk neckties tend to stretch out as they are worn; other materials hold their length and shape better
• Although certain tiemakers achieve a very consistent length, many labels vary significantly. Sometimes by several inches — within the same brand/style/color! If length is important to you, bring a tape measure, ask a salesperson for one, or hold up several ties next to each other to compare.

Off the Cuff is a DC-based men’s style blog written by Chris Hogan. My favorite posts by Chris can be found in his Style Guide section. In each, he tackles a particular topic — zip-front sweaters, suits, dressed-up jeans, classic vs. preppy, icons of classic style, canvas tote bags — and explores it at length. Mixing historical research, current trends, personal insight and loads of helpful info, each of these guides is a great starting place for your own exploration of the subject.

Recently, Off the Cuff added a new style guide on Fashion for the Shorter Gentlemen. It covers all the bases of how short men can dress professionally and look great. His main points are:

• Stripes — Choose stripes of a thinner variety like beaded or pinstripes. Choose stripes where the width between stripes best balances your frame. ¼” to ¾” should be sufficient. The wider your frame, the wider the stripe option, however, any wider than ¾” and you’ll begin to look squat.
• Suits — When trying on a suit, stand close to the mirror and take a good to see if it flatters you. Then, stand back about 5 to 10 feet from the mirror to get a visual sense of how others will see you in a typical day to day situation.
• Ties — For the short man, it’s best to go narrow. Not because it’s trendy, but because it’s more proportioned for a shorter frame. A ties that is 2 ½” to 3 ¼” at its widest point should be enough.
• Shirts — Choose a more trim European inspired fit with higher armholes and a slimmer body. These trimmer cuts can easily be shortened to fit your body and arms.
• Pants — Some designers are showing pleated, full cut dress pants again. Avoid this look at all costs. Stick to more traditional cuts, preferably with a flat front and short rise. If you prefer a pleated pant because you have thick thighs or wide hips, stick to shallower pleats.
• Alterations — The number one rule, no matter what the current fashion trend, is to have your clothes altered by a good tailor. This rule applies to men of all heights, but is particularly important to us short guys.

Last but not least, he gave a nod to Short Shrifted, saying “It’s a great site that covers clothing, brands and style in general. The site has great content and a lot of useful resources for short men.”

Scott Schuman’s street-fashion photoblog The Sartorialist is endlessly clickable. But it’s not just his subjects that are snazzy dressers. He’s a style icon in his own right (and at five-foot-six, a short style icon). So it’s cool to see him at the other end of the lens: Schuman was profiled in the most recent issue of Fantastic Man (#7). Because it’s beautifully designed and imported and run by guys with fancy names like Jop van Bennekom and Gert Jonkers, a copy of the magazine is more expensive than most books. Hardcover books. So I thought I’d give you a few of the highlights (below).

• In the picture shown here, Schuman describes his look: “This navy suit by Cesare Attolini is one of the few items of clothing that actually makes me feel sexy. Unfortunately, I had to pay dearly for that feeling! The just-slim-enough pants are perfect. They create a longer visual line. I really love a long visual line.”
• Elsewhere, he talks about growing up in Indiana. In school, he played football, baseball and basketball. “I played centre, protecting the quarterback. Typically, your biggest, meanest, strongest guy is the centre. I was always just about the smallest guy on the team, but I was the meanest, so I was never teased.”
• Brands Schuman is photographed in: Brooks Brothers, Cesare Attolini, Gianpaolo, Levi’s, Polo by Ralph Lauren.

Check out these links to a few of the full-page shots featured in the mag: photo 1, photo 2

Working on rough drafts of future posts tonight, I needed some background noise to keep me going. So I finally got around to checking out David Beach’s podcast “The Low Down.” I was impressed with his professional, funny, easy-going radio personality, and hope more people check out his show. I burned through a few episodes and as I was typing away on a series of jeans posts I’m working on, I heard this here blog mentioned. How very cool.

“The Low Down” got the, uh, down-low on Short Shrifted from Mikhail, a reader who’s already given me lots of great advice (thanks!). Anyway, Mikhail wrote in to the podcast to mention me and talk about the trouble short men have finding clothes. He said, “Stores are slowly making their sizes bigger and bigger, and every time we’re in a store and find something which fits us really well we need to let people know about it, to keep those sizes from disappearing.” Taking his own advice, he listed his favorite stores.

Mikhail’s top picks:

• Armani Exchange — jeans
• Banana Republic — size small fitted T-shirts
• Zara — sportcoats
• H&M — slim-fit button-down shirts

I can’t agree more with the H&M slim-fit dress shirts. Best off-the-rack fit I’ve encountered (and only $39). Get thee to H&M. And tune thyself in to “The Low Down” with David Beach.

This gent to the left is pretty darn tall, but check out that seriously truncated jacket he’s rocking. Looks like he raided a fifth-grader’s closet. A British fifth-grader attending an upper-crusty public school, that is. Any good Anglophile (or casual Wikipedia user) knows that at Eton College “from the 19th century until 1967, boys under the height of 5′4″ were required to wear the Eton suit, which replaced the tailcoat with the cropped Eton jacket (known colloquially as a “bum-freezer”).” Nice to imagine some wizened old headmaster looking after the sartorial challenges faced by the shrimpy kids falling asleep in his Latin class. Headmasters get a bad rap, I say.

In any case, I would have missed Eton’s cutoff by an inch, but my curiosity may be enough to motivate me to stop by Uniqlo in SoHo next month when this jacket debuts (May 16 supposedly).

The piece is part of the new mini-collection by Loden Dager, the latest invitee to Uniqlo’s Designer Invitation Projects. There’s a slideshow of the line on men.style, but most of the stuff looks horribly long and stretched out — more suited to the tall, skinny European-looking male model pictured. This American short-arse is most interested in the aforementioned “notch-lapel two-button blazer with shirting material lining the sleeves,” which will retail for $79.50, according to Men.Style. “Think circa ‘68,” Loden Dager’s Alexander Galan says of his inspiration. “Scooter rallies at Brighton Beach, mods lounging at Parisian sidewalk cafés, sipping Pernod in the summer heat.” Time to get the Vespa out of storage.

The gin in my freezer is so cold it’s almost syrupy. Glass and cocktail shaker are chilling in the fridge. And I made sure I still had some olives on hand for the martini I’ll be making after I hit “publish” on this post. This blog turned one year old last week — and I’m celebrating.

I feel good about what I’ve accomplished with Short Shrifted over the last year. I wrote 58 posts covering all sorts of topics: clothing stores and brands, custom tailoring, style advice, DIY alterations, fashion-industry news, sale alerts, interviews and helpful websites. A bunch of readers wrote to say that my advice was helpful and that felt good.

It’s been a technological and sartorial learning process for me. When I bought the domain name, I had absolutely no knowledge of blogging software, web design or html. But I’ve been able to tweak the design and add a few small bells and whistles. Best of all, I’ve followed some of my own research and advice and I feel like I’m slowly taking control of my wardrobe. I’ve gotten rid of a lot of clothes that never really fit right — and replaced them with things that really do fit properly.

Looking forward to the next year of Short Shrifted: some goals, a call to action, and then my martini.

What I want to accomplish:

• Write more posts. Sometimes it’s tough to work all day and come home and write a post, especially when Buffy repeats are on. But I aim to do it.
• Produce more original content. PDF style guides, how-to videos, interviews.
• Improve the site design The current default design doesn’t really reflect my aesthetic. I’m also thinking about creating a homepage with links to more stable content — PDFs, links, etc. — and having the blog incorporated into that somewhere.

What you can do:
I need your help. I want Short Shrifted readers to participate more in this blog — it keeps me going and it helps build a community. Please:

• Comment on posts. Agree? Disagree? Have something to add? Other readers want to hear what you have to say.
• Contact me. E-mail me with your questions, tips, suggestions, and feedback.
• Spread the word. Share this blog with your short friends.

Thanks to everyone who came to the site, read my advice, subscribed to the feed, commented or e-mailed me over the past year. I’m looking forward to Year Two of Short Shrifted!

Cheers,
Josh