Big and Tall Men’s Clothing

If you are size-challenged, whether extremely tall or extremely round about the waistline, you know how difficult it is to find something suitable to wear when shopping for men’s clothing at most regular department stores. Most designers do not even make pants that are more than a 40 inch waist and many do not even go that far, with sizes ending at 38. For those of us that wear a 42 inch waist with a 30 inch inseam, it seems strikingly unfair and makes it that much more difficult to muster the energy necessary to go out and shop. For that very reason many large men are going to some of the outlet or discount stores like Ross Dress for Less, Marshall’s, Nordstrom Rack, and Kohl’s, where they do stock more of these types of sizes.

If you look around at the population in general in most U.S. cities you will find a disproportionate number of heavy and tall men. Big people are abundant and not all of them are fat either. Big guys are just sometimes heavily muscled or large in one area of their bodies. That does not automatically mean that they are not athletic or can’t run or do exercise. It just means that genetically they are bigger guys. Lost in the wilds of the arctic they would survive and the thin ones would die out. But I digress. Men, real big men, need a place to shop for men’s clothing and although Big and Tall Stores abound, they are usually priced pretty steep and most of the clothes are not very appealing.

One of the stores that I like that does cater to bigger sized men is Old Navy. They do carry pant sizes up to size 40 and their cuts are comfortable. What I mean by that is that many times at regular department stores certain brands like Calvin Klein or Alfani will offer pants that say size 42 but are actually much smaller due to the slim-cut. Here is a news flash for designers: big guys can’t fit into slim cut apparel. It seems incredibly ridiculous to even have to say so in print but I can only hope that somewhere out there in designer-land some skinny as a rail men’s clothing designer will read this and have an epiphany of sorts.

Big men don’t go to fashion shows and usually don’t read GQ or when they do they can only grimace in pain at what they are missing. For every ten small or medium sized shirts on the rack, a big guy will be lucky to find one double X that will possibly fit him. But shirt sizes are mislabeled all the time as well. Many double and triple X sizes just will not fit and should never have been labeled as such.

Designers and retailers need to wake up and realize that many men are just plain big and in desperate need of men’s clothing options that suit us. I know a lot of guys that think the same thing and are just waiting for some sort of change in the fashion world. Hopefully something will be done about this and big men will finally one day be able to join the rest of the world in ease of shopping.