In this country and in many European countries, there is discrimination against short women. If you are 5-foot-3 or under, there is not one article of clothing that can be found in most stores. At one time, nearly every department store had a petite department, but just about all are gone. What happened? — Jeri, Dix Hills, N.Y.
Much has been written about the messed up relationship in fashion between sizing and body shape: the fact that a size 6 in one label is a 2 in another, or a size 10 in one is a 6 in another. Less attention has been paid to the issue of height. And when that does come up, it tends to be in the context of the taller among us and their difficulty finding pants long enough to fit.
But you are correct in pointing out that this problem may affect those on the shorter side … well, disproportionately.
Despite conventional wisdom that the population overall is getting taller, and despite the fact that most fashion samples are made for what the industry seems to consider the most desirable height, that of a 5-foot-9 model, the percentage of people on the shorter side turns out to be a lot of us.
The average American woman, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is 5-foot-3. The average height of American women between the ages of 20 and 29, that demographic so attractive to fashion brands, is 5-foot-4. And the classic definition of petite is, yes, 5-foot-4 and below.
This matters because making clothes for smaller people is not simply a matter of making a standard design shorter. Buying a too-big pair of pants, say, and getting them hemmed does not work. All the proportions — armholes, waist-to-chest ratios, the slope of the trousers — need to change.
For years, this sent smaller women first to the children’s departments of various stores, then to their tailors and then to the complaints section of whatever customer service department was at hand.
Although the need for smaller sizing was first raised in the 1940s, it wasn’t until the early 1980s that fashion as a whole woke up to an opportunity. Stores introduced the concept of the petite section: a stand-alone department filled with grown-up clothes made specifically for the smaller of stature.
The concept flourished at the end of the last century, with designers like Liz Claiborne and Adrienne Vittadini creating special petite lines (with labels often marked with a special “P”). Banana Republic even built dedicated petite stores.
Around 2006, things changed. “Three of the country’s most influential fashion emporiums — Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale’s — have quietly eliminated or drastically scaled back their petite departments,” The New York Times reported.
Instead, petite offerings migrated online, freeing up more floor space, as department stores tried to reimagine themselves as “experiential” venues or introduced new sections like streetwear and contemporary.
So what happened? The country did not, after all, magically grow taller overnight.
Part of the reasoning was vernacular. The presence of petite departments, like bridge lines (remember those?), started to seem like an old solution to a problem rather than a modern answer, and hence became less attractive. As customers turned away from the label, stores followed.
Once the era of body inclusivity dawned, “perhaps the idea of segregating people by their size disappeared,” said Linda Fargo, senior vice president for fashion and director of store presentation of Bergdorf Goodman. She also noted that for as long as she has been at the store (approximately 30 years), Bergdorf has not had a specific petite department but rather stocked size 0, or XS, which, she said, “usually fit the bill.”
Still, since the one thing you can depend on in fashion is that what was once out will come in again, Nordstrom brought back its petite department in 2024, precisely because of customer demand — albeit in only 25 of more than 88 stores. And this fall, Nordstrom will begin rolling out “petite-size premium denim to all our stores,” said Emily Crandall, the general merchandise manager of women’s apparel.
This is in part a response to changing fashion trends. “The petite business is highly driven by bottoms,” Crandall said. “And during the era of skinny jeans, it was easy for the petite customer to buy an ankle skinny and call it a day.” Once the barrel jean and more wide-leg styles became popular, she added, “it became more important to have cuts and fits tailored for the specific proportions of a petite frame.”
In other words, soon small could be big again.
Your Style Questions, Answered
Every week Vanessa will answer a reader’s fashion-related question, which you can send to her anytime via email or X. Questions are edited and condensed.
The post Does Fashion Discriminate Against Short People? appeared first on New York Times.
