shopping when you're 4'9"

Being only 4'9", I am often approached with the same question, "where do you buy your clothes?" and it is typically by another petite girl who is no stranger to my struggles. My struggles with clothing usually arise when I am looking for dress pants, jeans and shoes and is extremely frustrating.

So here are my tips for my fellow petite girls looking to buy cute clothes and shoes that fit:

Dress Pants

When I was an undergraduate student, I had to complete an internship as a graduation requirement and I was faced with the challenge of finding dress pants that were not a mile too long. And after walking around the mall, I quickly came to the realization that clothing stores do not typically carry a large variety of petite sizes in stock so they have to be ordered online (but they do exist!).

To date, I have found three stores that carry dress pants for us petite gals: Express, New York & Company and Banana Republic.

Express and New York & Company offer their petite customers a "short" size in their dress pants which is convenient because it takes about 2 inches off their standard sizes. The only problem that I have come across from these pants is that the leg width is often rather big but other than that, they fit rather well. In addition, both of these stores often offer great sales and coupons!

My favorite store to buy dress pants has to be Banana Republic because they have a separate clothing line designed for petite women in mind. As opposed to purchasing dress pants in a "short" size, Banana Republic's petite dress pants are specifically made for women who are 5'3" and under. If you do decide to purchase pants from Banana Republic, take the drive to one of their outlets as you can typically save up to 50%!

Jeans

Similar with my dress pants struggle, I had a difficult time of locating the perfect pair of jeans that I was not stepping on. My favorite jeans are found at American Eagle and while the short size are still a little too long for myself, they always shrink in the dryer. If I am unable to find jeans at American Eagle, I turn to Abercrombie Kids. Yup. While they are considered a children's clothing store, they are one of the few stores where I can find a simple pair of jeans that fit perfectly.

Shoes

Here's my pet peeve about shoes, people think that because I wear a size 2 shoe, my shoes are cheap. Sure, if I want to wear light up sneakers or sandals with butterflies on them they might be cheap but come on now. While I never seem to have difficulty finding cute sneakers to wear thanks to Nike, finding casual shoes has been a nightmare ever since I can remember. Once in a while I would come across a cute pair of flats or sandals at Famous Footwear, Payless or even Target but I could never find cute heels to wear to work or out until I came across Cinderella of Boston.

Cinderella of Boston is a shoe store that specializes in providing petite women with fashionable footwear. More specifically, Cinderella of Boston offers sizes 2 to 5 1/2 in both medium and wide widths in adorable styles.

I strongly recommend checking the size chart prior to ordering as a kids size 2 is equivalent to a size 3 1/2 on their site and even then, I ordered a half size up and the shoe fit perfectly.

I hope these tips help and if you have come across any stores that I did not mention, please let me know!