The length of ladies' evening gloves is measured in units of buttons. This is a traditional French measurement and one button is just over one US inch. Formal evening gloves that do not actually have buttons attached to them are also measured with this same standard. Below is an example of average lengths in butons for popular glove styles for women.
Wrist Gloves - 8 buttons.
A wrist glove reaches just past one's wrist area.
Evening Gloves - 16 to 22 buttons.
An evening glove reaches just below one's elbow.
Opera Gloves - 28 to 30 buttons.
An opera glove reaches past the elbow to the middle or top of one's biceps
Smaller or petite women may be able to wear an evening glove as an opera glove as there is not as much a difference in the style, but rather in the length. Therefore the same evening glove for one woman may be worn as an opera glove on a smaller woman.
To find your glove size, one should measure from the widest part of the palm across the four fingers (excluding the thumb) where the knuckles are found. This measurement in inches is your resulting glove size.
