Short people: The clothes don't fit
Shopping is just one of life's little annoyances for little humans
“I’m not short, I’m just more down to earth than other people”
For regular Small Stories readers, if I’ve not made this point enough already, few of the challenges faced by small people are the result of some nefarious cabal conspiring to keep little people downtrodden. No one, I trust, actively wants us to get injured in car crashes (see last week) or get worse grades at school (see previous weeks).
People just tend not to think about short individuals too much, which is fair enough. The normally-distributed nature of height for the population means that the vast majority of individuals will fall within a relatively well-defined range. This is a safe rule of thumb for, say, commercial car manufacturers, to cater for the vast majority, without needing to incur additional expense.
Daily life inconveniences short-statured people in a plethora of other ways though.
Take my sideline hustle as a DJ. (Yes, I DJ, because as a millennial Londoner, I feel it’s my duty to live up to all elements of the cliché). Financially speaking, my passion for electronic music has not been particularly fruitful. A fag packet calculation suggests that I have, in fact, almost certainly spent more money on equipment, records, and travel to gigs than I have earned in my “career”.
But I enjoy it nonetheless. It is a pleasant release from the serious world of financial journalism that dominates my professional life. That pleasure will last until - almost without fail - I arrive to play a gig at a new venue and find myself unable to reach the required equipment because, for some unfathomable reason, the DJ booth is constructed in such a way as only a behemoth could command it.
I’m not offended by this. I simply ask for a box to stand on to enable me to operate the necessary controls. Yet I can’t help feeling sorry for genuine professionals who would have to do this day in, day out. It can't be so uncommon that a 5’2’’ DJ shows up at a bar or club that no one in the history of London nightlife has considered elevation could be an issue. After all, women ply the trade too, around a quarter of whom are under 5’2’’ based on UK height charts.
I feel the same way about gyms. I can normally ride exercise bikes okay on the lowest setting, but it can often be a bit of a stretch. Rowing machines and leg lifters feel equally misshapen. It strikes me that this would be incredibly off-putting to anyone shorter than myself who wanted to use professional equipment to work out.
I am a huge fan of live music. When I do attend gigs, however, responses to my presence range from larger men showing excessive concern for my safety by yelling “make some room!” and using their considerable weight to guard my space, to drunkards with earnest questions over whether, due to my height, I could perform a particular sex act while still standing upright. (Stay classy, my boyhood town of Camberley).
Being short has its own everyday treasures though. Children’s clothes are VAT-exempt, and have been since the sales tax was introduced on 1 April 1973. One glorious day, me and some friends drove to designer outlet Bicester Village, and I picked up a pair of Ralph Lauren jeans for less than £20. That they were Ralph Lauren Kids is beside the point; they were still Ralph Lauren. I’m sure the VAT exemption is really meant to help struggling parents clothe their kids without a crippling tax bill. But on that day, it was still Justin 1 - Government 0.
It was also Justin 1 - Lankier Teens 0. The VAT exemption applies to “young children”, for which there is no legal definition, meaning relief reverts to size parameters - specifically, the maximum size of an average 14 year old when they reach their birthday. Hit that size early by growing faster than your peers, and you’ll get hit with the tax.
Estimates are a quarter of so-called young children's clothing, exempt from sales tax, is actually worn by adults. I was - and still am - a proud member of that 25 per cent.
On other days the score has finished Society 1 - Justin 0. I went to buy a new pair of shoes a while back. Normally I take a size 6 (adult, not children’s, before you write your own joke). But it is an uncommon size, which most shops just don’t hold a lot of stock in. According to retailer Shoe Zone, the UK average for a man is a size 9, and only around 7 per cent of sales are for size 6 models.
Sometimes I can get away with a size 7. On this occasion, I went up to the counter and said: “Sorry, but these are a little on the big side, I don’t suppose you‘ve got one size down?”
The salesman replied, without a second’s hesitation: “you’ll be fine, your feet are still growing…”.
I was 26 at the time. I politely explained that to him. In the finest piece of salesmanship you’ll see this side of the next millennium, he came straight back with: “well have you considered thicker socks?” Touché, Mr Salesman, touché.
It’s not all my fault. I’ve long since realised that small doesn’t really mean small, unless you’re in very specific shops. The size is small on the basis of population averages, but my 5’2’’ frame puts me in the lowest 0.4 per cent of men.
Trouble is, I have the chest dimensions of a regular male human. I do not, however, have the torso length of one. That leaves me shopping for clothes that are actually designed for incredibly skinny people, in the desperate hope that the tightness will pull the fabric close enough to my body at the waist to disguise its excess length. No one size fits all - a phrase that is tailor made for this scenario.
But it turns out no size at all fits men who are significantly shorter than average, no equivalent of a “petite” range in the women’s section. Regardless of the fact that it probably wouldn’t sell well based on the limited need for such a range, it would be a tough sell as it rubs up against the alpha mentality of men, who would hardly want to have their fears of being placed in the ‘micro’ section confirmed by having to buy from a range that labelled them as exactly that.
The forthrightness required to jump this sales gap was illustrated to me in frankly terrifying fashion one Saturday afternoon a few years ago. I had been to watch a rugby game at Twickenham stadium, south-west London. It was an all-round pleasant day, your stereotypical visit to the stands with excessively-priced, excessively-warm, but nonetheless enjoyable lager served in plastic pint cups, which children gather up at the end of the game in return for the one pound deposit us adult mugs paid.
Instead of hovering around at the end of the game to battle environmentally and financially conscious tots for discarded cups or, worse, face the interminable queue for the train, me and my friends decided to head to a local pub to continue making merry and discuss the day’s play. As I recall, England had won in a display of both brute force and technical grace. But I could be wrong. After all, I was making rather merry that day. All I can guess is that the reason I was making quite so merry was because of an England victory.
Further refreshments in hand, we were chin-wagging away in classic pub fashion. All of a sudden, I was interrupted by a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to see a slightly shorter than average, but very well-dressed man, clearly looking to engage me in discussion.
“Excuse me,” he politely interjected. “But do you have trouble buying shirts that fit you?”
I felt like I’ve been rumbled. I was pretty sure the clothes I was wearing were appropriately-sized. What mystic powers does this suave gentleman have that can bore to the very heart of my regular predicament from all the way across the room?
I guess so, I hesitantly replied, wondering where on earth this conversation was going.
“I know how you feel,” he nodded, sagely. “That’s why I started my own company to do something about it.”
This man turned out to be none other than the founder of a bespoke clothing company called Purple Hat. I can’t find the business card he gave me that evening, but the firm’s name will be forever soldered into my memory bank because of the way he decided to illustrate one of the problems with modern tailoring for those of a below-average stature.
The way the neck is sized on regular store-bought shirts, he explained, was such that the neck would not match the rest of the measurements needed if you wanted the piece to fall properly on a shorter body. For most manufacturers, the neck and body dimensions are basically made in proportion. Shockingly, short people don’t also have necks of a tiny circumference.
In what became the scariest sales pitch ever, the man from Purple Hat proceeded to illustrate his point by grasping my neck in his hand in order to measure it by feel. The technique would not have been out of place in an episode of Poirot as a greedy heir prepared to permanently silence an elderly relative. But instead of strangling me, he just told me, to the inch, what my neck size was.
While I’ve not yet sampled any of Purple Hat’s shirts, its boss’s brutal research methods and analysis of the issues around accommodating short people in the world of smart clothing seem sound. (If you’re reading, please don’t hurt me sir). The firm’s website explains its mission statement thus:
“At 5’ 5¾” and of stocky build, the founder of Purple Hat spent years having to buy and wear XL size shirts from premium brands. While these shirts fit in the collar and shoulders, they fail to fit anywhere else. Conventional menswear assumes because his collar size is 18” that he is over 6’ tall and around 16 stone. The sleeves are way too long, resulting in excess fabric bunching in the arms, while the length of the shirts fall almost to the knees, with huge excesses of fabric around the body giving the appearance of being even shorter and stockier.
“Purple Hat was launched to ensure that men under the height of 5’8” will no longer be underserved by conventional menswear brands; but be able to buy top quality clothes that fit properly and give confidence to the wearer.”
I’m amazed that the benchmark for fitting clothes, according to someone with a serious interest in the matter, is 5’8’’. On that analysis, conventional clothes shops would be failing to cater to any man less than two inches shorter than the UK average.
Back in the 1960s, at 5’7.5’’ the average UK bloke wouldn’t have even fit today’s average clothes.
That typical clothing appears outsized isn’t a phenomenon that is limited to the UK, or to men. In a recent documentary, Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain returned to her roots in Bangladesh. Shopping for a dress for a relative’s wedding proved tougher than she initially imagined.
“Obviously everything is like a gown on me,” Hussain says, holding up a potential outfit. “This is the problem I have; that is meant for a 5’9’’, beautifully slender human being, and I’m standing at a despicable 5’.”
‘Despicable’ is an interesting choice of words to describe one’s own physical appearance, even if it is tongue in cheek.
At least I (well, my parents) have the good fortune of not having had to replace any of my clothes since about age 12 due to my growth, or lack thereof. Over the years, as I have become sovereign over my own wardrobe, I have found myself devising a number of ruses to create the illusion regular adult clothes fit me. I would roll up the bottom of jeans, fold over the cuffs of smart shirts, and wear jumpers over them to encourage the notion that the lower edge’s visibility down below my waist visible was deliberate. I have even attempted to purposefully shrink items in the wash. I have steered well away from cummerbunds at formal events; I’m pretty sure they would make me look like I’ve been cut in half.
During my secondary school years, for reasons that still bemuse me, the three-quarter trouser length trend arrived on the scene. Thankfully, I was unable to participate in said trend; since the three-quarter lengths looked like flared jeans on me, except cut off at the ankle, a fashion style that, even if it had existed, would rightfully have failed to survive even the 1980s.
I’m not afraid to admit that I have had to buy multiple pairs of women’s shoes during my lifetime. Size 6 men’s feet exists as a size, I promise you. But stores are even less likely to stock size 5 and a half - my actual size when I’m not exaggerating just to fill a gap in my footwear needs or protect my pride.
Other times, it’s just fun to watch shop assistants squirm. When I was best man at a very tall friend’s wedding, he complained that his choice of wedding suit style was not available in the proportions he required. After heckling his spindly frame, I took the suit booking for the groomsmen into my local branch of Moss Bros and suffered very much the same fate. It seemed to come as much more of a shock to the staff than it did to me that there wasn’t a single suit in the whole store that would match my requirements.
You can’t alter a hire either, it turns out, as I have had to tailor all of the other suits I have bought in my lifetime. On the big day, we made do with some pins to fold it up with, which were swiftly removed before dropping the jacket and trousers back with the same embarrassed-looking assistant at Moss Bros the following day.
Next time, we’ll move on to the meatier subject of whether short people are any good at politics.