Idiotic Apparel Retailers: Thanks! For Making My Fall Shopping Experience a Nightmare

Try the department stores: I have trouble finding sizes smaller than 8 in the petite section there. What also irks me is that, just like in plus sizes, the selection is limited. Also, I’m 5’3-1/2", so I’m at the extreme tallest edge of petite. Lots of petite pants are too short and misses pants are sometimes too long. Half the time, pants or skirts that fit in the butt/thighs are too big in the waist. I get most of my clothes from Hecht’s (the DC area branch of the May Company) and JCPenny, with selected pieces from the Gap and Old Navy. Sadly, I can’t quite afford the specialty petite stores, and I only set foot in Aeropostale, Abercrombie and Fitch and American Eagle if they’re having a sale.

Men’s Wearhouse is where I went when I needed to drop $300 on a suit. Well, it’s not so much a suit as a blazer/dress shirt/pant/shoes/tie combination. The point is, I needed something fairly close to a suit, while maybe not a full-blown suit. The sales staff (and I do mean staff, there was a guy there just for shoes, which was kinda weird for me) knew their stuff and could put together a combination that I actually look good in. However, it’s not really a place for casual stuff like jeans.

Express Men jeans are, by the nature of the cut, extra long in the length department. For example, my typical pant length is a 34 or 36 but everything I have from Express Men is a 30 in length. You might want to try them on…

Might I suggest a kilt? One size nearly fits all. :smiley:

JohnBckWLD, being fat, average height, and female I can’t suggest from my personal experience, and DogDad wouldn’t help either, since he’s 5’2". I can sincerely tell you that NOBODY, but NOBODY, makes jeans in his size.

However, I can tell you that most of the tall skinny guys I work with seem to have some luck at a place called Big Dog. I do know they have many many fat sizes but evidently they do have some jeans & stuff in tall-not-fat sizes too.

And I’d like to add my contribution to banned clothing:
Anything that’s in the plus-sized clothing that’s wider than it is tall. I’ve seen (just this summer): middy tank tops in size THIRTY (my largest size ever was 28 and that’s when I weighed over 300 lbs, to give you perspective), “skirts” in size thirty that are barely long enough to hold the designer’s label, let alone cover the owner’s wide ass.
Any “plus size” clothes designer or retailer that assumes anyone that’s over size 14 MUST be a fat lazy slob and therefore all we need are some grungy-looking sweatpants and nasty t-shirts. Or, alternatively, that I enjoy wearing enough rhinestones and flashy shit on my clothing to look at home only in Vegas. As a billboard.
Oh, and the people who make plus-sized swimsuits who evidently all assume that the chestal areas of a “size 3X” swimsuit should suddenly be almost big enough to rival a small band-aid for coverage area.

I know your pain. REALLY.

This is why I have a “little woman who runs things up for me.” I buy clothing that’s alittle too big or too long, take it to Rose, and she tailors to fit—for only about $10–$20 per skirt or suit.

To paraphrase Homer Simpson, “I don’t want to look like a freak, just give me the Mu-Mu”.

It is nice to know that so many other people have issues with buying clothes as well. Actually, I used to be okay with finding stuff in stores. I’m about 6’4" and when I weighed 230 pounds, I had a lot less trouble finding stuff than I do now with my weight down to about 185*.
People always want to know why I keep my clothes for so long, it is because when I have something that fits I am happy, and I don’t want to go through the ordeal of finding stuff again. The surest way to sour my mood is to go clothes shopping.

*At least guys don’t get charged for alterations.

If you already know that you like Levi’s 550s, what exactly is the problem with ordering them online? You know your size, you know these particular jeans fit nicely, so why do you need to try them on before buying?

I’d like to add that people who wear 40X36" low-rise pants don’t actually have 40" waists. They have 36" ones, and prefer to have the pants hanging half-way down their ass.

And I, too, am wondering what the big deal is about buying online if you know of a size and style that fits you well.

-lv

Hmm. I used to be married to a 6’ 4 1/2", 135 lb guy. Yeah, 135. In his native England he had no problem finding jeans that fit him snugly, but once we moved to the US, he had the devil’s own time finding pants that fit even remotely well. It seemed that the Big and Tall stores really do mean Big AND Tall, when he really needed a Big and/or Tall. After looking fruitlessly for months, he just ended up borrowing Mom’s old Singer and becoming a dab hand at doing his own alterations.
We divorced in 1997 and he’s put on about 50 lbs since then, but I don’t know where he shops for clothes anymore, sorry.

"long sleeve casual tops.”

Men don’t wear “tops.” We wear “shirts.”

Same problem here. Jeans with a small enough waist, I can’t zip up. Jeans with a large enough seat, I’d need a belt for (and I hate belts). And all of them have to be taken up, and I’m 5’4" for God’s sake, that’s not particularly short.

And I have the same problem with tops. Broad shoulders but a small chest. I wept tears of joy the day they announced that shoulder pads were out, I looked absolutely comical in them.

And with my incredibly fucked-up mixture of sizes, two-piece suits are just double the nightmare. In my entire life I’ve found two that fit me well, top and bottom. One was a size 4 and the other a size 10. Figure that one out :rolleyes: