Short men should buy for the shoulders and hem the rest

Put on your dress trousers and find the waistband with your thumbs. If it's riding on your hip bones, a couple of inches below your navel, you just handed away two inches of leg and gave them to your torso. Nobody sees inches. They see ratio. And every off-the-rack low-rise trouser sold since about 2004 has been quietly making shorter men look shorter.

That's the first fix, and it costs nothing. Pull the pants up to your natural waist, which is the soft spot just above the hip bone where your body bends sideways. If they won't stay there, they're the wrong rise and no belt is going to save them.

Find out where your height actually is

Height isn't the variable. Distribution is. Two men at 5'6" can need opposite advice.

Sit on a hard chair with your back straight and have somebody measure from the seat to the top of your head. Then measure your inseam. If your seated height is long relative to the whole, you've got a long torso and short legs, and rise, hem and shoe color are where your money goes. If it's short, your legs are fine and your problems are jacket length, collar size and coats that swallow you.

Most short men are in the first camp and spend all their time worrying about the second. Check before you shop.

Rise, hem, taper, in that order

Look for a front rise around 11 inches on a dress trouser. Anything under 10 is going to sit low and cut you in half. A lot of brands print the rise on the product page now; if they don't, measure a pair you own from the crotch seam to the top of the waistband and use it as your yardstick.

Hem with no break or the barest kiss of one. A puddle of fabric on the shoe reads as "borrowed." At the same time, do not go so short that you flash sock when you're standing still. You want the hem to land on the top of the shoe and stop.

Taper is the third lever. A 20-inch leg opening on a man with a 28-inch inseam looks like a drapery sample. Ask for 16 to 17 inches at the hem on trousers, 15 to 16 on jeans if you like a slimmer line. Your tailor will taper from the knee down and it's one of the cheapest things in the shop.

Skip cuffs. A 1.5-inch turn-up draws a horizontal line across the bottom of your leg and shortens it. If you love them, 1.25 inches and never on a pleated wide-leg.

Buy the shoulders. Everything else is negotiable

A tailor can shorten sleeves, take in a waist, slim a body and raise a hem. Narrowing shoulders is surgery. It costs real money and it's the one alteration that can ruin a jacket.

So the seam sits on the end of your shoulder bone, or you put it back on the rack. Full stop.

Then get the length right. The jacket hem should roughly split the distance from your collar to the floor. On most men under 5'8" that means a short size: a 38S rather than a 38R, and the difference is about an inch and a half of body length plus a higher button stance. SuitSupply carries shorts. J.Crew carries shorts. Ash & Erie and Peter Manning build the whole line around men 5'8" and under, and their off-the-rack proportions will beat a regular size you've paid to alter.

That button stance matters more than people think. A button that closes at or just above your natural waist creates a long V of shirt and a long line of leg beneath. A low button point does the opposite and there's no fixing it.

Lapels around 3 to 3.25 inches. A 4-inch lapel on a 36 chest looks like you're wearing your father's suit, which, frankly, some of us were.

Your shirts are too long, and you can fix that for less than a tie

Off-the-rack shirt tails are cut to reach mid-thigh so they stay tucked on a tall man. Untucked, on you, that's a tunic.

Take three shirts to the tailor and have the tails shortened so they end at mid-fly, with maybe an inch of curve. Ask for the same on polos and casual shirts you wear out. It's a quick job and it changes how every pair of jeans you own looks.

Sleeves should end where your wrist meets your hand, and your jacket sleeve should show about a quarter inch of cuff. If the shirt sleeve has a placket you can't move, that's a shorten-from-the-cuff job and it's simple. Shortening a jacket sleeve from the shoulder, which you have to do when there are working buttonholes, is the expensive one. Ask the price on the phone before you buy the jacket.

Collars: a medium spread. Long, low points drag your face down. A giant cutaway on a small frame reads as costume.

Coats end at the hip

This is where most men lose it in November. The parka hits mid-thigh, the topcoat hits below the knee, and now you're a rectangle with a head.

Go for outerwear that ends at or just below the waistband. A trucker jacket, a Harrington, a bomber, a hip-length waxed cotton jacket. Any of them keep the break at your natural waist and leave the leg line intact.

You can wear a long overcoat. You just have to be ruthless about it: shoulders exact, sleeves hemmed, body taken in through the waist, and a hem that clears the knee rather than dying at mid-calf. A sloppy long coat is the single worst garment a short man can own. A sharp one is the best.

Shoes, and the lift question honestly

A sleek last with a tapered toe lengthens the foot and the line. A bulbous round toe on a short foot looks like a dinner roll. Chelsea boots and plain-toe derbies with a slim last do a lot of quiet work.

A boot with a genuine one-inch heel is fine and nobody will ever notice. A 2.5-inch internal lift is a different animal. It tips your weight forward, changes how you walk, and the ankle gives it away from across the room. An insole that buys you half an inch, sure. Beyond that you're managing a secret instead of wearing clothes.

Then match your shoe to your trouser when you want the longest line. Navy trousers with black or dark brown shoes read as one continuous column. Light khakis with dark shoes put a hard stop at your ankle. Same with belts: match the belt to the trousers rather than wearing a tan strap across a navy waist, or buy trousers with side adjusters and lose the belt entirely.

Scale everything down one notch

Smaller check patterns. Tighter stripe spacing. A 38mm or 40mm watch instead of a 44mm dive watch that hangs off your wrist. A messenger bag with the strap shortened so it sits at your hip, not your thigh. A scarf that's a scarf, not a blanket.

None of this is about hiding. It's about a set of measurements that happen to be yours, and a guy with a chalk marker who can make cloth respect them. Find a tailor, bring him five garments at once, and ask him what he'd change. Good ones love the question.

Nobody has ever walked out of a room thinking about how tall the best-dressed man in it was.