Daniel is my high school friend and recently became a customer at ATL. When we met in seventh grade, Daniel and I were both around 5’5”. As we grew older though, Daniel didn’t put on a few extra inches as I and most of his friends did.
Although Daniel’s height didn’t progress, though, his fashion sense did. He loves chic menswear (he actually introduced me to some great fabric mills in his home country of Italy), and he is nearly always the best-dressed person in the room when I see him.
Finding a good suit for a shorter man is not easy. It’s not for the reason you might think, though. I asked Daniel about it when I brought him in for a fitting with us and he explained to me:
“Any decent bespoke tailor can use their normal suit-making process to produce something for a shorter guy; that’s not the issue. The issue is that a suit for a shorter man should be able to make the wearer look taller and, kind of, more dignified.
“For example, the hem of the jacket might be cut a bit higher than on most suit jackets so that the legs won’t be cut off at the top and appear even shorter. Or a higher button placement on the jacket, it helps to create the illusion of height. And you don’t want the shoulders to be padded quite as much, because it will make a shorter person look stocky and create a boxy look that you don’t want. There are a million little tricks like that that a tailor can use to create a great suit for a short person.”
Because Hong, our head tailor, spent many years learning how to make suits in Vietnam, where 5’5” is about the average height for a man, she knew instantly how to make a great suit for someone of that height. In fact, Daniel said, he’s found that the American tailoring scene could learn from many other parts of the world in this respect.
“I’ve had better luck with Italian tailors and with a tailor I went to while visiting Vietnam, but American fashion is really not short-friendly,” he told me. “When I find a menswear store or, better yet, a tailor who really gets me, I’m going to be a loyal customer. I think most shorter guys or people with nontraditional body types of any sort are similar.”
ATL Tailor prides itself on being able to provide an extremely diverse array of men’s suit styles and types for all different body types and tastes, and being able to help a friend was certainly a nice reminder of why we love giving people options.