This time of year I travel a lot promoting my book of fashion advice for petite women, The Petite Handbook.  One of my favorite ways to pass the time spent waiting in airports is to play a little game I invented called “Petite Fashion Police.”  It is my own version of “What Not to Wear” without the TV cameras rolling.

Here’s how my game works. I check out what all of the petite women in the crowd are wearing.  It is always a pleasure to spot a true Petite Fashionista.  She is polished, pulled together, and doing everything right to flatter her petite proportions.  But the short women who really get my attention are the ones in need of a fashion makeover.  I give them a quick head-to-toe fashion evaluation and ask myself two questions.  Where did her outfit go wrong?  What fashion advice could I give to help her?   The truth of the matter is there is very little a petite woman cannot wear as long as she knows how to put it together.  The trick to dressing with confidence and style when you are short is to follow a few simple fashion rules.

Here are the most recent sightings of the Petite Fashion Police:

The Good

One more mature petite lady seen at the Delta Crown Room in the Atlanta airport proved that you can’t beat the timelessness of classics.  She stood out in the crowd wearing simple basics  – tailored khaki slacks and a crisp striped cotton shirt that elongated her petite figure.  She topped her outfit off with a colorful pink sweater tied around her neck, drawing attention upward for the illusion of height.

The Bad

A sure way to make yourself look shorter than you really are is to chop your petite frame up with too many patterns or too many blocks of color.  Case in point was the twenty-something petite spotted recently in Dallas wearing so many patterns that her outfit literally made me dizzy.  A horizontal striped dress with billowing floral sleeves and a print border is never a good choice for petite women, especially when worn with chocolate tights and tan suede cowboy boots. This “fashion victim” succeeded in making herself look almost as wide as she was tall.

The Ugly

The outfit that really put my fashion radar on high alert was the teenage girl wearing black pants so long that she was literally walking on them.  I truly feared for her safety.  If you are going to buy pants 6 inches too long, please take the time to get them hemmed before you suffer serious injury.