Dressing for short men: Topman jeans
Shopping for jeans can be a very testing experience, primarily because jeans are quite a personal item of clothing.
If you wear jeans then, chances are, you wear them a lot. So you want a pair which are comfortable, wearing, stylish and - most of all - which fit. The latter is a problem for those of us who are shorter in the leg.
For the last few years I have been living in the same two pairs of (cheap) jeans which I cut off to make them fit. So, as I mentioned previously, I am now embarking on a search for jeans which fit someone of my more diminutive stature.
For the record, I am a 28" waist and a 29" leg. Not sizes which are readily available on shelves.
But that is the first tip I can given anyone who is in the same boat as me. Find a style and fit you like on the shelves and then look online. Most high street brands seem to stock short-leg jeans on their website.
In fact, the internet is something of a gift to the sartorially-minded short man. Most brands will not spend the money to stock products which do not have a wide appeal on shelves. But they do make them.
So, with that in mind, I started with Topman and ordered a couple of their XS leg jeans from the internet. Two stretch skinny pairs and one stretch slim pair.
But I forgot the first half of my own bit of advice. It's just up there: "Find a style and fit you like on the shelves and then look online." I went straight to the online and forgot about the style and fit.
To give Topman their credit, they have done a great job with a short-leg jean. They don't look like they have taken a larger pair and lopped off the bottom three inches. The whole cut is in proportion and works.
But Topman is the king of the mainstream skinny clothing game. A few years ago it led the way with skinny and super skinny in the high street and it is a curve it stays well ahead of.
for t-shirts this can provide a problem for those of us with shorter, but not skinny, physiques, but that is another story for another day. This is about jeans and Topman do such a good job of scaling their jeans down to a shorter leg that you have to be proportionally tiny to fit into them.
I found myself with not much room to move. So it's back to the drawing board for me on the jeans hunt.
But if you are a smaller skinny-fit chap in search of a pair or decent jeans which look like they have been made for you, then Topman might just have what you need.
If you have any tips for a good place to try out for short-fit clothes I would love to hear about it: ping me an email