Size inclusiveness may be trending in the fashion industry, but petite women are still falling short of options.
The muse of Seventh Avenue is thin, leggy and Amazonian. Just look at Kendall Jenner, Forbes’ freshly crowned highest paid model, who stands at 5 feet 10 inches.
She’s in good company, too. Of the professional clotheshorses who clomp down the runway, not one towers below 5 feet 9 inches. Never mind that this rarified group of glamorous giraffes makes up only 10 percent of the female population in the United States, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, nor the fact that the average American woman age 20 and over clocks in at just under 5 feet 4 inches. Even as plus sizing is—deservedly—seeing a higher profile, petite offerings remain tragically stunted.
It’s a state of affairs that led Avani Agarwal and Camille Moroz to found Stature, an online boutique “for the vertically challenged” woman 5 feet 3 inches or under. Based in New York, the store offers a thoughtfully curated range of clothing and accessories from independent brands such as Carleen, Dusen Dusen, Rachel Comey, Maryam Nassir Zadeh, Samantha Pleet, and Wray.
“Every item features shorter torsos and inseams, narrower shoulders, higher and smaller arm holes, and pants with correct ankle-to-leg ratio,” Moroz said. Shoes are stocked in sizes 3.5 and 4. If the collections they love don’t carry sizes that work on petite bodies, Agarwal and Moroz will collaborate with the designers to produce a limited selection of pieces “sized exclusively for Stature.”