How Not to Wear Short Jackets–Should you or Shouldn’t You?

I was standing on my local station platform yesterday morning and spotted a women, all in black (as I was) wearing a short sparkly tweed jacket that ended just above her hips, worn with jeans. There were, in fact, an amazing number of style disasters on the platform yesterday morning for some reason but this one seriously caught my eye as something not to do.

It really doesn’t matter what’s in fashion or not. What you wear should be a reflection of a) your style and equally b) what suits you. Short jackets only suit certain people and anything above a size 12 has to be considered very carefully as they can have the effect of cutting you in half and making you look shorter and wider. If it’s tight and you want to wear it done up it may well do you no favours at all.

So the next time you fall in love with a short jacket, sparkly or not, tweed or not, designer or not think very carefully.

Size 10/12 or lower and you probably don’t need to worry, but it depends on your height. Anything over that and make sure that there are no er……….bumps showing.

Don’t wear a short jacket with tight jeans if you have a large behind and definitely don’t do it up. You run the risk of looking frumpy, bumpy or worse.

Make sure when buying that you take a good look from the back before flashing the plastic. Preferably ask an honest friend what they think. If in doubt don’t.

If you’re trying to make a short jacket work double time with jeans, and you’re not the right shape for this look, don’t. Keep your short jacket to wear undone with a skirt and wear something longer, such as a modern trench, or short wool coat, with jeans. If it’s belted leave undone.

I’m a great believer, as someone who has recently gone from a size 14+ to a size 10 and 5’2” tall in streamlining your look. It tends to make you look both slimmer and taller. So dresses can be wonderful, and longer jackets, and slim coats. Incidentally I had a comment the other day on why I’m happy to tell the world about my height. Why would that worry me? The best things come in small packages, don’t they???

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