My first day at The Economist, I was treated to a lavish leftover lunch from some editorial meetings, and the sight of Hernando De Soto strolling casually through the office with a shopping bag in hand. As I walked through the door that evening, my father asked "How did it go?"
"Hernando De Soto," I told him excitedly, "shops at Rochester Big and Tall!" That being where my father bought many of his clothes . . . from which you may infer where I get my own magnificent height.
I was telling that anecdote to someone the other night (I can't remember why, and no, my life is not as spectacularly dull as this makes it sound). Suddenly it occurred to me to wonder why clothing for . . . er . . . the larger man . . . is almost always found bundled into "Big and Tall" stores. My father, who is quite slender, doesn't need extra accommodation around the waist; he just needs clothes that are long enough to cover his endless inseam. I wouldn't think there would be much overlap between the customer base.
The even deeper puzzle is why this is only true of men's clothing. The only women's clothes I can think of that are sold jointly to tall women and plus-size women are pantyhose (and I wish they weren't, as I need stockings that are longer, not wider).
But otherwise, plus-sized women have their own stores, and tall women have . . . well, frankly, a few mail-order places and the occasional "tall girl" boutique which, when you find one, is generally stocked with all manner of grotesquerie, presumably on the theory that women with few options will be glad to find a pair of orange-and-chartreuse bellbottoms as long as it covers our ankles . . . I'm sorry, are you still here? What was I saying?
Ah, yes . . . why the difference between Lane Bryant and Rochester Big and Tall? If there's some logic to bundling outsized men's clothes in one convenient location, doesn't it apply equally well to women?
What I want to know is why everything at Big&Tall stores looks like it was designed by the Stalinist Ukrainian Fashion Collective #37.
you'se silly... Men don't buy as many clothes. We tend to wear a lot of stuff till it is functionally worn out. So, there isn't that much market for different kinds of specialty shops, percentage wise. So? they throw them together. Because the manufacturer who speciallizes in outside-the-norm has a smaller group to serve, how are they going to make the economies of scale work? Make stuff for every size. Not just Tall or Wide. There are also many that are outsized in various directions, and big/tall is more likely to have something close.
Now, as to why the women's side works the way it does? I have a few vague ideas, but it's safer for me to not say, I'm thinkin'. The one thing that does occur to me is to wonder if the outliers of heighth for women are a much smaller percentage of the whole than for men. Rendering the group who is like you, too small to make it worthwhile to have a Lane-the-the-amazing-tall-girl-store.
Maybe you should start an exotic online store...
Easy, it makes sense to cater to people who have trouble finding their sizes elsewhere. Its easier to build a business when you can cater to more than one slice of the public.
Now, as far as why not Lane Bryant? Presumably, there are as many larger women and not so many taller women as compared to men, who have decent supplies of both.
I see not reason why Lane Bryant shouldn't cater to tall women and they could probably do well, but perhaps they have their reasons..
Could it be that women are more likely to buy clothes more often? Especially in a shopping mall?
While I'm not sure I have a direct answer to your question, it's my experience that men and women have very different habits when it comes to shopping for clothes. Women generally view clothes shopping as a pleasant experience to be drawn out and savored. Men view it as a chore to be completed as quickly and efficiently as possible.
My guess is that there are separate women's stores for big and tall because women shop more and thus the market for women's clothes is larger than men's. With a larger market there is more room for specialization.
Maybe men on average are less sensitive than women and so are willing to shop at a fat people shop even if they're not. Dunno.
There might be many 'Big & Tall men's stores but their merchandise is pretty exclusively big. I wear 'LT' shirts and jackets and 90% of these come from online. I agree about hating shopping. I'm willing to do the online shopping and put up with the disappointment when an item doesn't match the pictures or is poorly made. It beats going to stores and browsing all the clothes that won't fit. I don't even want to discuss the fun of fitting size 14 feet!
Steve
It's probably because I live in Texas, but around here there's a lot of men that look just like me, BIG and Tall.
We are often addressed by the generic "Bubba" but very few are genuine Bubbas- most are doctors and lawyers and such.
Offensive lineman gotta come from somewhere.
The above answers based on men not buying as many clothes or liking to shop go against the evidence, which is that there are tall stores (yes, mixed with big, but still there are tall stores) for men but not for women.
SwissArmyD may be on to something with the speculation that the variance in heights is greater for men than for women, but then why are there petite women's clothes all over the place? It is much easier to shorten clothing than it is to lengthen it, and yet it's incredibly easy to buy pre-shortened (petite) women's clothes and very difficult to find longer women's clothes. I don't think clothing makers have figured out that people, particularly women, have gotten taller in the last 100 years.
Is there a wide selection of short clothing for men? If not, is it because they don't exist or because they're embarrassed at being short and thus don't want clothing labelled that way? That certainly wouldn't explain women's clothes - why would women accept the plus size label but not tall?
So it seems to me that either 1) clothing makers are really dense and haven't figured out that they're missing a market; or 2)perhaps the target "average" for mens' clothing is somewhat on the short side, while the target "average" for women is somewhat on the tall side. Thus, the largest groups that don't fit into standard clothing may be tall men (because the average is biased downwards) and short women (because the average is biased upward).
On #1, clothing makers being dense, there may be a discouraged shopper effect where certain groups (tall women) are so used to not having choice that they don't even bother to ask, whereas petite women and tall men are used to choice and thus more vocal if they don't get it (while short men just don't like to draw attention to their height? I'm just speculating).
Boy, it's easy to kill time on these questions, isn't it? But this is something I think about every time I'm shopping and see a whole section for petite clothes, but nothing at all for tall. And I'm not nearly as tall as Megan, just enough above average for it to be inconvenient.
Could it be that men's clothing is more sensitive to length? A woman can wear a pair of jeans that reaches to anywhere between the floor and her knees, but most men's jeans need to end within about 1/2" of the ankle bone? There seems to be greater variations in women's sleeves as well. A skirt that's three inches shorter on a taller woman (relatively shorter, that is) may not be what you or the designer had in mind, but it's not totally ridiculous like a pair of men's slacks that are three inches short would be. I know this doesn't apply to all garments, but it may be enough to change the retail landscape.
I'm not a fashion nazi, but the dress clothes @ big and tall mens shops are the same stuff but bigger. And at least the one I've been to recently was pretty exclusively dress clothes.
Basically if your over, say, 6'3'' and 200 lbs, shopping at department stores becomes very hit and miss. And since dudes hate shopping in general, that is a major negative. I
And hell, 10 years ago it was damn near impossible to find shoes above size 13 in normal shoes stores either, at least where I lived. And that was an arbitrary cutoff; a lot of shoe companies like to shave a few sizes off so guys with small feet don't feel so small. That's gotten better though.
If you want a conundrum, try being a short, thin man. No problem finding a few big and tall stores in almost any town of non-negligible size, but try finding smalls in mens clothes anywhere, LOL.
Two theories.
(i) Interestingly, most Big&Tall men's stores carry not just the eponymous items, but also clothing for extremely short men. So maybe it's just an economies of scale thing; a given area may need ten stores for normal-sized men, but it will only support one store for men who are more than two S.D.'s from the mean. Therefore all the wacky sizes are crunched into one store.
(ii) If you are as tall as I am, you get used to the fact that you will either get your clothes tailored, or you will look slightly ridiculous. I imagine that the same hold for my fat brethren. So there is probably a higher tolerance among the morbidly obese for too-long clothes, and among the morbidly tall for too-wide clothes, than in the general population. If you were going to get it tailored anyway, might as well give them extra fabric to work with; if you weren't, looking like a clown is something you get used to.a
If stores for heavier women are called "Lane Bryant," should stores for tall stringbean chicks be called "Kobe Bryant"?
"The above answers based on men not buying as many clothes or liking to shop go against the evidence"
weeeell, no. I'd guess there are 5x as many womens clothing stores as mens... ask yourself how many square feet of a department store are devoted to women versus men. Big and tall is an extremely narrow band, and as somebody pointed out above, these stores are often mostly dress clothes. I believe that is because dress clothes need to actually fit well, and also cost substantially more [better profit margin]. Eons ago when I bought the last suit that I never wore, the pants had to be completely re-cut, because the size was so far off. [large chest to waist ratio] That is something very easy to do at most B&T's where you have to live with what is on the rack at most dept. stores unless it's a suit and you are willing to pay. That is if anything in that dept store comes close to fitting. Having a B&T concentrates the number of unusual sizes in one spot. Generally the selection is conservative, as many mens suits are, and you have to pay top dollar for any of it.
That is an important point. It ain't cheap. On the other hand, for everyday, I may shop at someplace cheap, and just get whatever works in 2xlt, and then take in the sides myself, if I decide to care. The collar doesn't have to button if I don't wear it with a tie, and the sleeves don't have to be the best length, since I am in the habit of rolling them up anyway.
How does that contrast with a woman that may have a long torso, or not, bigger hips or not. Wears 5in heels? I have a freind 5 foot nothing that never doesn't wear heels, except when we are hiking, and then she just cuffs the pants and viola! Most men don't get close to that unless it's the basic boot cut
Would women be willing to buy a well tailored suit in any color as long as it's black? Men seem to want clothes that cover them, Women are much more interested in fit, so even without the differing tastes and varieties, they also want more ways to fit. As a paradox to keep it profitable, manufacturers would want to keep that concentration of choice in the middle of the range, or a bit lower. Because for both genders, wearing something a bit large is far easier. You can't wear something that is too small.
The other phenom that might be in play, is the potential woman have to appropriate mens clothing, where man are unlikely to do the reverse. The fit is still an issue there, but if you've searched and searched, you just want something that comes close to fitting. It is a lot more likely that 6'2" Megan will find a pair of levis even if they are for men in a department store, than it is that I will find a dress shirt with 21" neck and 37" sleeves in that same store. I don't have much choice but to drive across town and spend $40+ on a shirt that fits, because otherwise I can't wear a tie, or close the sleeves.
I think the deal is finally that Big and Tall men actually push that highside boundry so far, that they don't have much choice but to shop at
"Stalinist Ukrainian Fashion Collective #37" and pay through the nose. Where women at the edge have more choices and styles they can finegle, so there is not enough critical mass to have an entire store devoted to just tall...
I have long wished that so-called "Big & Tall" stores would actually be "Big and/or Tall."
Is there a wide selection of short clothing for men?
No. Short and thin or short and normal build is actually harder to find than short and large in my experience, but of course you always notice when they don't have your size and not all the sizes that they're out of. So I assume that I'm biased, but it gets annoying looking through a bunch of 32-36" waist and 30" inseam pants trying to find a 30-30. Suit selection is pretty horrible too, though they do come in "short," "regular," and "long." My size is 38S, which again is close to the smallest size that exists. (The smallest is 36S, which isn't available everywhere.) I'm not freakishly short, either, 5'6". If I were any shorter it would be a real problem, as many companies don't even make men's sizes smaller than mine, though some exist down to 28" or 29" waist and inseam.
So yeah, one could ask why there are entire stores for petite women but the selection for short guys is pretty poor.
Hmm, stumbled onto your diary in error. I was looking for the short and fat women's blog. Which I assure you is as difficult to find as "tall only".
Cheers!
Male, fat, tall, British. Commonly trousers that are big enough in the waist for me are too short in the leg. The assumption seems to be that Males of Girth are, as we say, short-arses. As for shopping habits: I wear trousers and shirts until they die, and then I wear them for gardening.
I got in the habit of intentionally wear shirts that are too big for me. They're more comfortable and easier to find. I'm an odd case though as I'm three foot six. (On another matter the name "Hernando De Soto" always makes me think of the Spanish conquistador first. Possibly as I read a book by William Sanders about the guy not too long ago. It was called "Conquest")
Anyway I'm hoping to cutback at Atlantic blogs as I fear this is breaking the spirit of my Lenten pledge.
"I was telling that anecdote to someone the other night (I can't remember why, and no, my life is not as spectacularly dull as this makes it sound)."
I'm such a dork I would have probably giggled and jumped up and down like a school girl. Then I would text message all of my poli sci friends and they would lose it. Then I would tell my well-adjusted friends and they would just roll their eyes and the Peruvians would go "how the fuck do you know who de Soto is, gringo?"
I had no idea de Soto was so tall. You would have thought he could have then beat up Fujimori.
ditto what John Thacker said. And, contra Ann's speculation, I'd happily shop in a shop targeted for short men, stigma be damned, if it meant I could buy pants without getting them hemmed. I know how short I am; people who see me know how short I am; what's the marginal embarrassment of having an S on the tag in my clothes? Buying pants made for a six-foot guy doesn't make me six feet-- just requires a trip to the tailor.
On vacation in Arizona this week I saw a "Big & Tall & Short" clothes for men store-- which I suppose confirms that the "and" is meant as an "and/or". And that was the first "short" store I'd ever seen, which confirms the sense that men's clothing retail just can't support different niche stores-- so all the niches get thrown in together.
I think it's great. When I was a skinny kid, I had to buy pants at regular stores and shirts at big&talls. I was 6'5" with a 32" inseam. Now that I put on a few...dozen... I can do all my shopping at one store.
One thing I find annoying is you can't get 2XLXT shirts. It's either XLXT, 2XLT or 3XLT.
I think it may have something to do with the fact that men's "big and tall" clothes are just that--they're simply a larger-scale version of men's clothes.
It's not the same for women's clothes: We wear our clothes more fitted, and our shapes are more complicated to fit things too. Moreover, what's flattering for women differs based on size and shape: For instance, a skirt that ends mid-calf or below the knee would look lovely on Megan. If a petite person like me wore such a skirt though, even in the proper size for me, I'd look like I was borrowing Megan's clothes. The clothes Lane Bryant sells aren't simply bigger; they're specifically designed to be flattering to women with fuller figures.
So, men's big and tall are sold together because the adjustments are similar: You're just making it either wider or longer, and because men's clothes are sold by measurement, rather than size to begin with, the adjustment is not that complicated.
But for women, it is more complicated, and the adjustments involved in making clothes for heavier women are different than those involved in making clothes for taller (but not heavier) or, for that matter, shorter women. So, they're not sold together.
As a short woman, I used to bitch all the time about my difficulty finding clothes--having met some very tall women, i now know my issues pale in comparison to theirs. That said, the person up tread who mentions "petite" sizes is overestimating the availability of clothing for shorter women. Non-petite women's clothing is often designed for taller-than-average women, and nearly all shorter than average women need to wear some kind of petite. I'm closer to the average female height than Megan is, but a lot of petite clothing is still much too long in the arms and legs for me.
I'm with the "economy of scale" crowd. I buy nearly all my clothes, apart from the new suit every five or ten years. Clothes shopping is not my idea of fun under any circumstances. I am at the upper end of the "normal" range in department stores, so selection is spotty. On the other hand, Lands End or L.L. Bean reliably have good selection and quality, so why hassle with bricks and mortar? Were I an inch or two taller I would go to a Big & Tall shop for suits, but no clothing merchant is getting a lot of business from me.
I would guess the ratio of big/tall men is much closer to 1 than the ratio of big/tall women. Men have a higher variance in factors that are genetically determined than women, but this is probably not the case for environmentally determined factors. So there should be more very tall men than very tall women (which seems anecdotally true and is backed up by the fact that you can't find tall-girl clothes), but there are probably about the same number of very heavy men and women (again, seems anecdotally true). Height and weight are probably also positively correlated. All of this means that the probability of meeting a tall, fat guy is much higher than meetinga tall, fat woman, making it better to combine the two for men, but not so much for women.
John Thacker & Njorl. I don't see how you'd consider a 30" inseam a short-man's pants...unless it's a short man with very long legs and a compressed torso. Njorl is 6'5" and I am 6'1" and we both wear a 32" (though he is obviously very short-legged for his height).
Well, Rochester could limit its selection to just Big and let someone else sell the Tall. Or vice versa. Or it could open up entirely separate stores for Tall and for Big.
Putting the two in one store is just crazy.
Jaysus fuck. And you call yourself an economist.
I don't see how you'd consider a 30" inseam a short-man's pants...unless it's a short man with very long legs and a compressed torso. Njorl is 6'5" and I am 6'1" and we both wear a 32" (though he is obviously very short-legged for his height).
I judge it by the fact that I'm 5'6" and wear a 30" waist and 30" inseam. More importantly, I judge it by that there aren't any shorter inseams, anyway. If I wanted a shorter pair of trousers, it wouldn't matter because they don't exist.
You're 7" taller than me, but surely that doesn't mean that one would expect the inseam length from the bottom of your crotch to the bottom of your slacks to be 7" longer. Most people who I know who are 6' tall have a slightly longer inseam than 32", but of course people can choose to wear at different lengths. I probably wear my slacks slightly longer than the correct fit, because otherwise I would not be able to find fitting slacks at all without hemming them. (Shorter size pants, especially in boys' sizes, don't fit in other areas.)
The Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto has two dogs, named Marx and Engels because "they are German, hairy and have no respect for property".
http://www.johannorberg.net/?page=displayblog&month=12&year=2004#713
One last possible historical explanation: the existence of sewing machines and the fact that it used to be that a lot of women sewed. Plus that it's much easier to modify a standard pattern for a tall, thin woman than modify it to fit someone who is "large".
Actually, it probably does boil down to the fact that a very much larger percentage of the US female population is overweight than over-tall.
Megan, might I suggest that you contact some professional runway models and ask them what they do? They would seem to have the same predicament.
Also a small man at 5' 6". It is very difficult to find decent clothing. Cheap clothes are easy - T shirts and jeans. When it comes to slightly dressier clothes forget it. My field is business casual all the time. Cheap polo shirts in my size are easy to find. Go to a more expensive shop and it's as if they are trying to send you away. Some stores literally have nothing on the shelf that will fit me. My pant size is also 30" x 30" and it is difficult to find. In dress pants it's almost impossible without tailoring. I know several men that I work with who are shorter than me, and I have no idea how/where they find clothes to fit. If I want a suit I have to pay through the nose for something custom made in every dimension. You can't just cut down a larger suit to fit, as eventually it looks rediculous - the styling of the suit simply no longer matches the body underneath it.
SwissArmyD -
Regarding this:
"The above answers based on men not buying as many clothes or liking to shop go against the evidence"
"weeeell, no. I'd guess there are 5x as many womens clothing stores as mens... "
I must not have made my point clearly. I wasn't saying that men like to shop as much as women. As I saw it, the puzzle that Megan was pointing out is that there simply aren't tall stores for women. If the lack of combined 'big and tall' stores for women was due to women wanting to shop more, presumably that would lead to more overall stores, i.e. both 'big' stores and 'tall' stores. Instead, tall stores exist for men (at least in combination with big) but they do not exist at all for women. That's hard to explain by arguing that it's due to women's stronger preference for clothes.
What Sara said fits my speculation that perhaps women's clothes are aimed at the tall end of the 'normal' range, leaving a more extensive petite market to be served. And Sara, you're probably right that petite clothing isn't as abundant as it seems to me. It's just frustrating that the standard department store has an entire petite section but literally no tall clothing for women at all (or at best a couple of pairs of jeans with an extra two inches at the hems).
Instead, tall stores exist for men (at least in combination with big) but they do not exist at all for women.
Although no short clothes for me. At least it's relatively easy to have pants hemmed to be shorter, unlike issues that women have with dresses and such. Suits are more annoying than pants for me for the same reason; alterations are difficult and they look wrong if all the proportions aren't changed appropriately.