J.Crew petite sizes are only available online, so I hadn’t had an opportunity to try anything out to see how their sizing runs. Curiosity finally got the better of me and I decided to order a few items of petite suiting in size 0. I ordered a pair of city-fit petite pants in size 0 that indicated they had “stretch”, in the hopes that meant they would fit smaller. The city-fit is the pant with the lowest rise available at J.Crew. I also ordered the matching jacket.
Here they are on me:
Petite city-fit stretch wool bistro pant, size p0, $138 and petite stretch wool two-button jacket, size p0, $23
Holy cow! Look at those pants!
As you can see, the suit is quite large, and so I did not consider taking it to my tailor. The jacket might be alterable as it is a nice length, and the sleeves fit well, but it would need to be taken in along the sides. On me, it would need to be taken in quite a bit, so I’m not sure if it could be done, because taking in the sides too much disrupts the sleeve and begins to become a costly alteration.
The pants are just all around too big. I would need to get the entire thing taken in from the waist, to the hip, to the thigh, and all the way down the leg. The rise is about 8 inches, which is a good measurement for dress pants, so at least that would not have to be altered and would keep the alterations price down. However, because the hip needs to be taken in, that would effect the pocket placement, and just wasn’t worth it to me.
This is unfortunate because J.Crew fabrics and styles are quite nice and I’ve always secretly wanted to be the kind of girl who runs around in J.Crew. Oh well…I guess it’s not meant to be.
J.Crew has since added size petite 00 to their suiting options, but by the way the petite 0 fit, I do not expect one size smaller to be much better.
If you need small fitting petite suiting, J.Crew is not the way to go.
