At Last, a Good Store for Short Girls

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It’s rare to find someone who hasn't run into fit issues while shopping, whether the problem is a back gap, crazy size discrepancies from brand to brand, or just a complete lack of things in your size, period. For petite women, the struggle generally means finding a tailor to raise hemlines and take in sleeve lengths, but even after those changes are made, it doesn’t mean a dress will sit right on your frame.

If this is a problem you’re familiar with, you’ll probably be psyched to learn about Stature, a (very) new e-commerce boutique that only sells clothes for the “vertically challenged,” as the brand puts it. Launched earlier this summer by colleagues-turned-friends Avani Agarwal and Camille Moroz, Stature makes shopping a hell of a lot more convenient — and more pleasant — for small-framed women.

The pair, who both stand at 5’0”, hand-pick clothes and accessories from a really impressive roster of independent designers like Rachel Comey, Dusen Dusen, Mari Guidicelli, and Wray. But Stature does more than just merchandise size smalls and extra-smalls: Every piece in the selection is sized for smaller frames specifically — think shorter torsos and inseams, higher and smaller arm holes, more narrow shoulders, bottoms with proportional ankle-to-leg ratio. It also carries the small shoe sizes that always sell out first (35 and 36).

“As any woman can attest, when you go to a store and try something on — denim, swimwear, whatever it is — if things don’t fit you and they’re supposedly your standard sizing and the size you're used to, you get this feeling like, ‘Is there something wrong with me?’” says Moroz.

Moroz and Agarwal note that while some more established designers, like Rachel Comey, suggest styles they already know will work well for true petites, others don’t. When it comes to these brands, Stature collaborates with the individual designers on a limited run of items in custom petite sizing. These special pieces, including a Loup denim dress ($119) and Dusen Dusen high-waisted trousers ($204), are denoted on the site as “sized for Stature.”

Right now on the site, you’ll find pretty midi-length dresses, tailored wide-leg pants, and a ton of effortless jumpsuits — which Agarwal notes as Stature’s best-selling category, specifically calling out iterations by Ilana Kohn, Samantha Pleet, and Wray — all modeled by “real” women who are 5’4” or shorter.

It also feels important to mention that the shop is currently running a huge summer sale, offering up to 40% off on everything from shoes to dresses. These gorgeous Mari Giudicelli raffia mules are down to $309 (from $515), and this Rachel Antonoff T-shirt mini dress is $89 (originally $148).

Most pieces are exclusively available in extra-small and small sizes, with some mediums thrown in the mix here and there, depending on the style. According to Moroz and Agarwal, this was an intentional choice for their launch: They felt that mediums and larges tend to have inaccurate proportions, with torsos too long or shoulders too broad.

But you can expect to see bigger sizes for short women in the near future. “We’re trying to broaden our offerings as we move along and as we collect feedback about what petite means, which is that it’s a shorter woman but with many different body types and shapes,” says Agarwal. “That’s one of our biggest takeaways as we move forward,” Moroz echoes.”"We need to expand beyond what we know.”

Naturally, they’re still learning — Stature is still only eight weeks old. Factor that in along with other immediate future plans for the brand, like adding more designers to its roster and talks of a pop-up shop in their native Brooklyn, and we have a feeling you’re going to want to keep an eye on the site from here on out.