I feel James Lileks’s pain, I really do. He probably wouldn’t believe me; his response would be something like “That’s ridiculous. You wear XL. Everything is XL or bigger,” which is true. But there’s XL, and then there’s XL.
For example: I have long arms and a fairly sizeable neck, like a football player crossed with a spider monkey. As a result, I buy shirts of neck size 17 1/2 inches, with 36 inch sleeves. Just finding shirts like that is a major challenge; most shirts are built such that the sleeve length is exactly twice that of the neck, so a 17 1/2 usually has 34 or 35 inch sleeves, depending on maker, leaving my wrists exposed, which leads to much tut-tutting from Goodwife Smith next door. (I think they already believe I’m a witch. I don’t wish to be branded a trollop as well.) When I do find a shirt that fits my extremities, however, I’m faced with another sad fact: major clothiers seem to assume that if you have a 17 1/2″ neck and 36″ sleeves, you have a 72″ waist. It’s like wearing a tent with buttons. I end up tucking 2 or 3 yards of material into the back, which is basically a signal to everyone “I BUY FAT MAN CLOTHING.” Luckily, my mother-in-law is able to remove most of this extra material and make my shirts look non-ridiculous.
My size problems exist with pants as well, though. I have an inseam of 34 inches. Luckily, pretty much every store carries pants in that length. Unfortunately, they tend to stock them up to only a certain waist-size, which is invariably smaller than what I wear. It’s as if the buyers make a certain assumption: people heavier than 225 pounds do not exist in their reality. Anyone who is tall enough to wear a 34″ inseam is also going to be built like bloody tent peg and require a 30″ waist. Anyone who needs a 38″ or 40″ waist, well, they can’t possibly be more than 5’8″ tall, so we’re not going to offer those pants in anything longer than a 30″ inseam. My favorite store shopping experience on earth is the mecca that is Target, but I can’t buy pants there. Their 34″ inseam pants stop at 34″ waist. The only things I can get in 36″ or 38″ waists are 32″ and 30″ inseams, respectively, and it’s getting too cold out for capri pants (though my ankles do look stellar in them).
I won’t go into great depth about hats, but there’s a certain fact that I wish hatmakers would realize: when a person’s head gets wider, it also gets deeper. I can get most ballcaps on, at the very end of their adjustment band, but they sit atop my head like a bloody beanie. Two notable exceptions: a John Deere hat that I bought in Texas many years ago that’s big enough to hold a moderately-sized watermelon, and an NRA hat that I got back in college when I joined for a year. (Don’t ask.)
All of this is frustrating, but compounding the situation is the fact that I appear to be on the cusp of “big and tall” status. If I go to an actual “big and tall department,” everything is WAY big. Like, 48″ waists and 40″ inseams. Ridiculous, gigantor stuff. Plus, it’s all made by Dickie’s, and looks like something my grandfather would have dismissed as “awful conservative.”
One shining beacon in the darkness has been Old Navy, which James doesn’t like because it’s Staggeringly Hip, but which I like because they have pants and shirts aplenty in my varying sizes. At this point I get 90% of my decent clothing there.
Now if I could just convince Nike and Adidas that some of the people walking the earth have feet requiring more than a C-width shoe.
Yeah, similar but opposit neck issue here – 34-35 inch sleeves needed but only a 15 inch neck. So I either end up buying the correct neck and rolling the sleeves or buying a shirt which I couldn’t fill wearing 3 ascots. Yeah, yeah pencil-neck…got it. I think clothes makers picked 4 sizes in 1910 (S,M,L,W.H.Taft) and haven’t looked back. I’m guessing most guys have some size issue at some time in their life, so why don’t they make clothes for all of those scenarios??? Even if I had to shop at the Tall Ampersand Scrawny I’d be ok with that.