Fashion Dos and Don'ts for the FunSize (Petite) Community

[lvpiggy]

Originally Posted by tatu_002

Ok so this is a question, is it ok to wear knee high boots? When I wear knee high boots I appear WAY shorter :( im 5"5' and I am avoiding all long boots because of that. is there anyone else thinks that knee high boots are bad for petits ? :(

most unusual! i generally find they make me look taller . . . what's your inseam? maybe it's a matter of proportion? am i just sadly mistaken about what i see in the mirror?

dug out an old pic of me in knee high boots:



definitely interested to hear others' opinions as well . . . i was so surprised to discover that many petite girls don't like knee high boots, and piggy is determined to get to the bottom of this mystery!

[plain jane doe]

Originally Posted by tatu_002

Ok so this is a question, is it ok to wear knee high boots? When I wear knee high boots I appear WAY shorter :( im 5"5' and I am avoiding all long boots because of that. is there anyone else thinks that knee high boots are bad for petits ? :(

I'm 5'1" and knee-high boots are great for me. I have short legs as well. What sort of boots have you tried and what have you worn them with? I wear with skirts and dresses above the knee. Pants with boots are not so good in my case, but I think that has more to do with thunder thigh and tapering.

[lvpiggy]

Originally Posted by plain jane doe

^^ I'm 5'1" and knee-high boots are great for me. I have short legs as well. What sort of boots have you tried and what have you worn them with? I wear with skirts and dresses above the knee. Pants with boots are not so good in my case, but I think that has more to do with thunder thigh and tapering.

*phew* i feel slightly reassured now . . . maybe i'm not crazy after all!

of course, if there's one thing i love even more than knee high boots . . . OTK!!! they make the legs look so slender!

[plain jane doe]

^^ Piggy, I have seen a lot of your pictures, and you look fab in everything! Nice to see that OTK can work for shorties -- I've been eyeing some myself. I think there is a thread in the glass slipper where some other petite ladies could use your reassurance

[Hoodster777]

I love that they included the part about costume tutus, mine looked like it swallowed me when I had to wear it for my recital, lol.

With leggings, I try to wear them proportionate to the top that they're with. My tunics from TopShop (same style, different colors) I wear with my ankle-length pair, and my longer tank dress is worn with my knee-length ones.

Watch the hemline of your shirts- I find they make my torso look short if the shirt is too long, and worn with pants.

Watch the size of your bag, if its too big it could make you look way smaller than you are!

[KristyDarling]

Originally Posted by eckertle

I try to avoid shoes with ankle straps... I don't want to cut my legs off at any point.

ITA with this one! Ankle straps make my stubby legs look even stubbier.

[lvpiggy]

Originally Posted by plain jane doe

^^ Piggy, I have seen a lot of your pictures, and you look fab in everything! Nice to see that OTK can work for shorties -- I've been eyeing some myself. I think there is a thread in the glass slipper where some other petite ladies could use your reassurance

egads! piggy will do her best to help, post haste!

[NicolesCloset]

piggy gorgeous
I disagree with the pointy toe. I think it elongates. As a matter of fact I think I read pointy toe does elongate. Am I wrong?

[cherubicanh]

^^I agree..some pointy shoes look fab on....you just have to find the right fit. I also LOVE knee high boots. I'm 5'2 5'3 and I love them! The only rule I totally agree with is the capris..I personally hate them on me. I think it's really how you work your outfit...anyone with confidence can make ANYTHING WORK! Whether you're 5'1 or 5'9.

[tatu_002]

ah I see now, lvpiggy your pics are great. so I guess it depends on what I wear them with, I normally wear them with pants, so what plain jane doe said maybe I should try them with dresses/skirts.
and I noticed that these boots are better with heels! the ones I tried had no heels so I am just guessing now.

I need to go shopping again and try some more, but this time with a dress.

[candypants1100]

Originally Posted by plain jane doe

^^ Do you have a pic? I was mostly thinking along the lines of Shimma's Don't #6

http://piperlime.gap.com/browse/prod...scid=668720002 here's a pic of wedges i'd definitely do

[twinkletoes]

Hand carried bag or shoulder bag - which do you prefer for a petite silhouette? I waffle about this one every time I buy a bag.

[kara_n]

I'm 5'3" and I break sooo many of these rules hahha. yikes!

[ShimmaPuff]

Wow! You all are making this into a wiki!

Originally Posted by candypants1100

i don't agree with 'don't #1'. i've seen plenty of petite girls pull off cropped and capri pants- as long as they're cut close to the leg, they look fantastic in my opinion

They are blessed with luck, Xtreme Cage Match skillz, or a combination!

As meluvs2shop points out

Originally Posted by meluvs2shop

...there is an exception to every rule...

I remember one night in the grocery store, there was a lady in line, I would guess her age at about 65, and her height at just under five feet.

She had on a short black leather jacket over a plain white v-neck tee and a handful of ancient tarnished silver necklaces, a very gently gathered skirt in a soft-looking thickish cotton fabric, brown, that ended about a skimpy inch above the top of white slouchy socks that peeked up from the top of the itty bitty brown hiking boots she wore on her teeny tiny feet. (No bag, she fished a card-holder out of her skirt pocket to pay for her stuff).

She looked put together and elegant enough to go anywhere. Somehow, on her, it all worked, though if anyone had come to me and asked my opinion not only of that outfit, but of just about every element of it, I would have suggested that they try something else.

She didn't look tall. She looked FunSize and fabulous, and she made casual look effortless and elegant.

It made such an impression on me that I think I scampered over here to post about it somewhere, and with the exception of getting that the black shading of the silver nodded to the jacket, and that people with miniature feet can indeed wear hiking boots with skirts, I was, and still am mystified at how she managed to pull it off.

I'd be willing to bet that it took her most of those 60 odd years to hone those skillz (and probably a good chunk of them to find those specific pieces with the exact cut and fit that were perfect for her).

With fashion, as with anything, one of the real reasons rules exist in the first place is to make things easier.

The process of learning what looks best on US, including which rules we get to break, and which ones we don't, is life-long, with a steep learning curve, one of those journeys that is itself the destination, and happens neither overnight nor all at once.

So for me, the "no capris" rule is a reprieve - an absolution and freedom from feeling obligated to dedicating myself to the quest for that one pair of cropped pants that may or may not exist that would look good on me!

And it's a reminder that it's not my fault.

Maybe My One True Magic Pair of capris exists out there somewhere, but at 57, I've tried on enough of them - and seen enough other FunSize people who should have left theirs in the store, to know it's not a question of just bad shopping skills!

Rules like that empower me to allocate the resources I have to concentrating on obtaining things on that long, long list of stuff I want that will almost surely look good on me without worrying about that short list of things that almost surely won't.

Exceptions to rules give us all hope, and remind us that "almost surely" does not mean "will never, ever happen."

A few weeks ago, one of the Real Housewives of Atlanta, who has a bosom that is - well, she had an augmentation without a lift, on purpose, and frequently goes braless because she likes the look, so you can draw your own conclusions - anyway, they put her in a draped neckline top that I would have thrown fifty feet from her dressing room, and it worked! (Though most of her tops totally don't).

Now I suspect that in that case, the stylist may have been the one with the skillz - or the stroke of luck, but the principle is the same.

I've seen my sister-in-law, who is shorter than me (I'm five two and possibly a vague-ish fraction) wear cropped jeans successfully, too, and like the ones candypants mentions, they fit close to the leg - my sister-in-law's are really more like jeggings (they are actually Gloria Vanderbilt jeans she found for $6 at Marshalls, and are a size smaller than they should be - she's got her some junk in the trunk) but because she wears them with a jacket in the same denim (an even bigger rulebreaker - and not just for FunSize) thrown over a loose crotch-length (and therefore junk-concealing) tunic in darkdenim blue silk jersey knit, on her, the monochrome effect kicks in hard enough to cancel out the leg chop!) and the overall smallness of her person, maybe the darkness of the wash? the un-jean-jacketlike cut of the jacket? or some mysterious factor I can't identify somehow de-venomizes the Dreaded Dual Denim Viper.

I know I've tried it all on, and even making allowances for the differences in our sizes - she's bigger on the bottom, I'm bigger on top - but what on her somehow transmorgifies itself into a cute outfit, on me ooks like a circus sideshow and a train wreck got married and had a baby!

Originally Posted by NicolesCloset

piggy gorgeous I disagree with the pointy toe. I think it elongates. As a matter of fact I think I read pointy toe does elongate. Am I wrong?

No, you're right. It definitely elongates. The problem is that the first thing it elongates is the foot.

So if you are short, with short-to-average length legs, and average-to-large sized feet, there is a very high probability that considering your foot-to-leg ratio, elongating that foot is going to give you that "upper case L" silhouette.

Now you may be able to beat it, depending on all kinds of sub-measurements like floor-to-knee and floor-to-hem and length of shoe point, but put the same shoes on someone with the same height and the same shoe size, and she's ready for Sesame Street.

Back to the whole reason for rules - you can spend several days searching for that one magical pair of pointy toe shoes that work for you - with that one outfit, or you can spend a few hours buying two pairs of round-toed shoes that look great on you with just about anything you throw on, and spend the rest of the three days buying purses!

(I know everyone here knows better than to buy shoes too short and squeeze their toes down into the pointy part).

Originally Posted by plain jane doe

I'm 5'1" and knee-high boots are great for me. I have short legs as well.

I've had knee-high boots that worked great for me, too - but I just lucked up, because most of the time, they don't, and even the ones that do only work with a hem that is about an inch above the knee.

Lower or raise that hem even half an inch, and those same boots put me in the trash-masher and flick the turbo switch.

Micro-differences can impact us more than they do tall people.

I suspect the reasons for this may be Science-related, and therefore not explainable by me.

[plain jane doe]

Originally Posted by candypants1100

http://piperlime.gap.com/browse/prod...scid=668720002 here's a pic of wedges i'd definitely do

Those are cute, I was thinking more along the lines of a 5" 70s platform and then a wedge heel to boot.