Finding suits for short, portly men is hell, I tell you, pure hell.
Men’s suits are the family business, and while it’s in my blood and I keep up with what’s going on in the industry through my father, it’s not what I do for a living, so this is all from my best recollection. A “short” suit is going to shorten a bunch of things: the length of the jacket, the gorge of the lapel, the length of the jacket’s sleeves, the rise of the pants, and the length of the pants. How much shorter than the regular depends on the suit and the manufacturer (as do the measurements of the regular). No two styles of suits will have exactly the same measurements for a given size. You try them on and you get them altered; having short/regular/long just means you have a better-proportioned starting point to begin from. Trying to figure out fit based on arm measurements, etc. isn’t going to help much because the salespeople aren’t going to know those numbers for the suits they sell either. The one thing a short, portly man needs is a good tailor.
