Most ready-to-wear gloves are made in a few standard sizes, so it is sometimes hard to find styles for shorter fingers. Baggy fingertips at the end of your gloves can be uncomfortable and impractical, but if you choose carefully, there are plenty of stylish alternatives.

Fingerless gloves do have fingers, but they are usually around half the length of regular ones, and they have open ends, allowing your fingertips to point out. Fingerless gloves might seem to be the unhappy compromise for shorter fingers, but they actually have many advantages over regular gloves. Fingerless gloves often come in knitted, modern stretch styles, so they offer a comfortable and snug fit around fingers. In addition to the practicality of allowing you to have your fingertips free, many styles come with a pull-back mitten top. This gives you the option of having warm fingertips when you are not doing anything particularly fiddly.

Magic stretch gloves became popular at the end of the 1980s and are often famed for being the original white gloves of late-‘80s ravers. These knitted gloves are extremely small but contain around 10 percent Spandex, so they expand to fit all hands like a second skin. They come in adult and children's sizes, but because they are so shrunken, they stretch to fit as you pull them on, leaving no baggy fabric on even the shortest of fingers. These snug-fitting gloves come in many colors, but for winter warmth, find a pair that contains some wool rather than only synthetic fibers. Motorcross gloves are another option; a person who rides a scooter should buy good-quality motorcross gloves, rather than regular leather gloves, because these also contain a high stretch element to give you a tight fit and plenty of control.

Mittens consist of one compartment for all your fingers, with a separate section for the thumb. This allows you to perform basic tasks while wearing them. Although the main section tends to be a little baggy anyway, this is fairly comfortable in a mitten, because it is not designed to be a close fit. You can also easily slide mittens up your hands a little higher, because the individual fingers do not stop the glove from going any further. The good thing about the extra space in mittens is that it is designed to trap more air than in fingered gloves. This gives you more insulation and warmer hands. Mittens lined with sheepskin, or a double-knit layer, are cozy and feel snug around shorter fingers.

Getting made-to-measure gloves is the ultimate fashion fix for anyone who does not conform to regulation glove sizes. You could knit your own, or get an obliging friend or relative to do this, and simply adjust the knitting pattern by taking out a few rows when shaping the fingers. Bespoke leather gloves are more expensive, but because good leather accessories are designed to last for years, this can be an investment. A glove-maker measures your fingers, palm and knuckles to make a pattern for your hand. This usually only has to be done once, and thereafter, you can easily order perfectly fitted gloves. Glove-makers offering this service to online or mail-order customers usually ask that you do the measurements yourself and supply an outline of your hands.