I feel, as someone that’s 6′ 6″, that I’ve been alive long enough to know the answer to the question of whether we struggle with finding clothing. I’ve also been overweight for a few years, mostly due to a medication.
I remember big and tall clothing shopping in Wichita, which is one place I’ve been a lot due to being from there. I’ve also had to shop in various other states, mostly to the west of and including Kansas. What I have found is that we are sorely under-represented, though I suspect there are more of us than you see out and about because they order online mostly like I have had to over recent years.
But before the internet, you’d be lucky if Walmart had size 14 shoes. They definitely didn’t have much above that, if anything, in most stores. Nowadays, Walmart allows third party sellers so them being cheap on the big and tall stuff isn’t as big of a deal if you order something through their website.
So How Do Big And Tall Men And Women Find New Shirts?
One big issue when you are extremely tall is that you need a longer shirt. They actually make an XLT size, which is extra large tall, but it’s so rare out in the stores I have been to that I’ve only encountered it twice in my life. Once when shopping for tall people clothing in Oregon at a Fred Meyer store and once at a Spencer’s in a mall somewhere in Kansas.
A lady I took a class with had sons that were into basketball and she showed me that they have catalogs for clothing items made for tall people. As someone that has shopped around a lot, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of that. But, as with many specialty items they were pricey enough that it wasn’t feasible for me to order a lot from such a catalog.
These days, I shop for 3XL or so when it comes to shirts and jackets. It is still not easy to find stuff I like everywhere, but I do pretty good through the internet. Sites like RedBubble exist, for instance, that let you get anything you want printed on sizes like XXXL shirts for tall people so you can just start making your own clothing that way if you’re not being served in your area with clothing that speaks to you.
