Anyone else tired of the fashion advice for shorter men? Thoughts?
I’m a shorter guy (5’5). Anyone else tired of the fashion advice we are told again and again? It feels so restrictive and doesn’t let you experiment with silhouette and color.
I’ll summarize them here:
1. Avoid loose fitting clothes
For the past year I’ve been embracing more of a classic/straight fit and I feel way more comfortable than with the slim fits. Also my thighs are being squeezed as much.
There really needs to be more discussion about how proportions are key, not necessarily the looseness of a particular piece in isolation. (In my opinion)
2. Wear low contrast outfits
This one in particular is so restrictive. If I follow this rule, i technically can’t wear a white t shirt with dark indigo jeans. Or navy sportscoat with beige trousers etc. I don’t even really care that it makes me look shorter, color pairing is already hard enough, im not going to restrict myself further.
And then there’s skin based color pairing, which says I (fair skin) can’t wear white, beige, pink, yellow. Although this seems to be more of a female fashion discussion.
3. Wear height boosting shoes
No.
4. Wear vertical stripes
Is this really fooling anyone? I can’t imagine the orientation of the stripes really changes the way you’re perceived that much.
I wish the advice was more centered around proportions, info on what can be altered, clothing brands, and how to abuse generous return policies.
(Tbh I have trouble with the whole notion of tall being better in fashion, but that’s a separate topic and more body dysmorphia)
27 Replies
yeah this is all bs so it's good that you've realized this
there's literally no rules for dressing for your height, just wear what you think looks good on you
who are you dressing for
Wear what you like. A lot of Nike shoes does make you 1-2” taller though so that’s natural not just limited to short guys, all guys
@Billiam's PC have you tried these?
but yeah that advice is garbage and this server is full of short people who ignore these and look good
Idk mostly myself. I follow some people I like on insta. And I have an online friend in ny who is my height and always wears oversized streetwear clothing . Not my exact style but i admire it
Yeah I have some shoes that just so happen to increase my height. But I would never buy them just for that purpose. Me personally
i think we need to be truthful about the reason why we're putting on clothes sometimes because why you're doing it is actually what's going to drive you into different directions. if you wanna do it for other people that's cool, but there's a distinct difference in direction.
if you're doing it for yourself-- it's self expression right. it's a conscious decision in putting on a series of things on your body that you think makes you feel good about yourself or define who you are visually. because this is something that is about YOU, there can't be any rules- who's to say what you should wear and not wear, the idea of rules or guidelines restricting you is purely of other people's making.
this is all to say if you're doing it for you, then your height only matters as much as you care for it to matter. all of this is the exploration of self.
to me it's like saying sorry you can't like the colour blue because you're 5'5
Right I can agree with that. I’d rather it be extension of my personality and taste. I’m not into looksmaxxing or whatever
Although I suppose there’s still a part of me that’s wants to dress to social norms to some level
Tim Dessaint has done irreparable damage to short kings
(assuming this is where you saw the advice bc I've seen him propose all of these)
you can debunk the first point fairly easily by the existence of Japan lol
5'5 would be quite average there and loose clothing has been the norm for about a decade there
also I'd hazard to guess that a lot of these people giving this advice don't look at women's inspo at all, which can have some great pointers for the same thing
paging wuz's fits
i have not once thought in this server 'this would look better if they were taller'
I mean in extremely fringe cases that might apply, like if you just happen to be born with a very stumpy torso and wear a long shirt but yeah it's usually nothing you can't fix with more visual balancing
Lol idk if I’ve seen that particular vid but I’m sure it’s the same as I’ve been hearing since I started looking on the internet.
Maybe it’s just remnants of classic menswear that says things like visually increasing the length of your legs makes you look taller (which is implied that looking taller is good). These days the vids I watch talk about the “rule of thirds” which is like the same conclusion. It seems pretty prevalent, and the implication is that looking taller = good.
Ah
I think the issue w/ those vids is that they tend to kinda railroad people into thinking of thirds as 1:2 top:bottom ratio only
tall used to be good because you could reach the taller fruit and therefore survive from eating that fruit
Also I had a similar issue starting out where I think a lot of these channels want to cater to the idea that you have to dress to a certain standard to be "manly enough" to be fashionable
I feel like a lot of people that don't already fit that standard start out feeling like they need to correct for themselves and end up looking for "fashion advice for X" vs just in general
so a lot of the results end up just telling you how to correct for the "flaw" in your body vs working with it to make it flattering
I'd agree with you on this lol
It's a bit archaic bc this advice used to be primarily for making suits look well-proportioned when high rise wasn't as prominent
I do like the longer legs look, but that goes back to visual balance more so than just appearing taller
Yeah it might be a visual balance thing. Similar to how all models for clothes seem to be 6’+. Just drapes better or something
Just a thought, but the rules you described aren't really social norms? They're all just tricks to make you visually appear less short. Like horizontal strips having a "thinning" effect.
It's less a social norm and more of a beauty standard IMO. And if you aren't dressing to maximize your Hinge matches... fuck the rules 🤷
Yeah it sounds like this advice is about "how to make yourself look taller" which has nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with people telling you that you should feel insecure which is a load of stupid bs
Sorry you can’t like the color blue, I am 5’5” and I call dibs
How is a beauty standard not a social norm?
Being white is a beauty standard, but it's also not a social norm. Social norms are (generally) behavioral, and being short isn't a behavior.
Behaving like being short is of lesser status in a made up ordinal ranking of beauty absolutely is a behaviour though.
I just think it's fucked that someone lied to yall and told u that clothes can make you look taller
How do you behave like your short? Unless you mean generally insecure, because you're short?
Either way, this is getting pedantic, my bad. My point was if OP doesn't care about a beauty standard that encourages short people to dress in a way to make them appear taller, more power to him to explore interesting fits 🤷
The “behaving like” in that sentence is referring to placing height in the hierarchy of beauty, not to “being short”
they can’t?!?! :nooooo:
Heels and a floor length trench coat