I think I still know exactly where I was standing when my friend Carlos and I went shopping for the first time together. We’d been lifting weights together for roughly six months, and when Carlos complained – as he often did, and always profanely – that nothing in the store fit his thighs anymore, I lost it and yelled, “FINE, let me help you go shopping, for fucks sake.” Carlos looks like a rock-solid competitive weightlifter threw a dart at an athletic build dimension chart: Wide shoulders, barrel chest, tree-trunk legs – with a waist that’s four belt sizes too small for his thighs. Needless to say, shopping for off-the-rack clothing was Carlos’ personal version of hell.
It took three department stores, five boutique shops, and hours wasted on a Saturday before we found trousers that didn’t either gap loudly at the waist or ride up his legs like they were spray painted there. When he finally found a style that fit properly? He bought them in every colour they came in, like he was preparing for the apocalypse.
I may never see another grown man sob openly in the men’s clothing department again. Here’s the dirty secret of the American clothing industry: We live in one of the most physiques diverse countries in the world – and yet our clothing retail options are built around serving an imaginary “average” man with body proportions approximately equal to those of an American Apparel model circa 1978.
Are you taller or shorter than 5’10”?
Do you have more muscle than the average John Doe, or more fat? Do you have what the internet delightfully refers to as “hockey hips”? Giant thighs?
Skinny calves? A lot of extra pounds around your middle you’re trying to hide? Slim enough that your arms disappear when you turn sideways?
Congratulations, you’ve grown up spending your entire life compromising whenever you get dressed. And it sucks. Let’s address the elephant in the room: Trousers.
There is no larger clothing regret that most men with outside-of-average-body proportions will ever experience than “why do my trousers never fit.” Short neck? Long arms? Skinny calves?
Giant thighs? Most shirts will fit you everywhere but one unfortunate place. But unless you’re magically blessed with dimensions that are equally proportioned – which, statistically speaking, no one is – you have spent years grabbing for whatever trousers are even sort of close to your size in the hopes that they might actually fit when you get home.
Shopping for clothes when you have a non-standard silhouette isn’t quite sending yourself out into the world naked, but it’s close. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Over the years, I’ve got really good at helping my friends – and readers – find workarounds, hacks, and actual solutions for dressing when the rest of the clothing world wants you to fail.
I also happen to know a lot of very cool dudes with similar problems, so I asked them to weigh in on how they’ve learned to deal with fittings that only suck approximately 75% of the time instead of 100%. My friend Mike just turned 6’7” and hasn’t finished growing since the age of 15. That means his arms are disproportionately long, which for years forced him into buying XXL shirts just to get enough sleeve length, then drowning in excess fabric around his rib cage. “I basically looked like I was wearing a freaking parachute whenever I left the house,” Mike said to me over drinks last week. “I got so used to it that, at one point, I just accepted that clothes were never going to fit me right.” That was until Mike discovered the magic of made-to-measure shirts.
And no, we’re not talking fancy bespoke stuff here that costs more than your monthly rent. I’m talking about the made-to-measure programs that a ton of companies now offer, like Proper Cloth and Spier & Mackay. For approximately $100-150 (not much more than you’d pay for a quality off-the-rack shirt! ), you can get a perfectly-fitting shirt made that’s constructed with your actual body dimensions in mind.
Mike cried when he first slid into amade-to-measure shirt that fit him perfectly and didn’t look like a kid’s oversized t-shirt. Don’t worry – I got the group text. My guy friends with athletic builds swear that the biggest revolution for their wardrobes came from brands finally starting to acknowledge that “muscle” is an actual body type.
Brands like Peter Manning exist solely to serve insanely well-dressed dudes under 5’8”. High quality, American-made denim brands like Left Field NYC cater to athletic builds with roomier cuts through the leg, without assuming you also need room for elephantine thighs. Bonobos basically built their entire early brand recognition on selling trousers that fit dudes with “hockey butts.” Shopping for clothes when you have big thighs used to be torture.
Now it just sorta sucks. Similarly, the “big and tall” market has come leaps and bounds in the last few years, though it still has a long way to go. “For years, big and tall meant ‘big OR tall,’ not both,” my friend James once ranted to me after hitting yet another dead end at Encore. “Every pair of trousers was either long enough but didn’t come close to covering my ass, or were wide enough but wouldn’t get past my calves.” Thankfully brands like DXL are FINALLY starting to acknowledge that yes, some men actually are both big AND tall. Tailoring is the other half of the proper fitting puzzle.
Once again: Fuck shopping for clothes when you know they’ll never fit off-the-rack. Find a tailor that you love, and build your wardrobe around clothes that can be altered to fit your frame. Want to know how much of a game changer this is?
I’ve written about this so many times for this newsletter that I’m sure my readers think I’m being paid off by the Tailors’ Guild, but hear me out. If you have a good tailor and actually take care of your clothes, there is very little you cant fix about a garment that doesn’t fit your particular dimensions. Here’s the thing about tailors: Once you find a good one, you never let them go.
Mine is named Elena, and she’s been altering my clothes for nearly a decade. She’s an older Ukrainian woman who doesn’t take shit from anyone and has extremely strong opinions about everything from lapel width to trouser breaks. She’s saved me thousands of dollars on clothing by making $200 dollar jackets look like damn near $800 suits, and can perform seemingly geometric magic on anything I give her that’s slightly off for my frame.
The first time I stupidly brought Elena a jacket that was entirely hopeless (“Um, no,” she said, eyeballing the egregious shoulders and chest of a stupid wool blazer I’d bought on sale online without trying on. “No what?” I asked, hands raised in defence.) she refused to even touch it. She simply looked at me, shook her head, and said “no.” Then stared at me in silence until I got the point. To this day, I’ve never repeated that mistake.
Like I said above, finding a good tailor can take some trial and error. The people who work at your local dry cleaner who “do alterations” are generally terrible at altering things that actually need work. You want someone who studied tailoring as a trade, preferably from a country with a strong sewing tradition (think Eastern European, Italian, Asian).
You want someone who knows how a garment is built down to its core. Believe it or not, you can have *everything* on a garment altered. That twenty-dollar waist taken in?
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Yup. Those baggy-ass dress trousers tapered down from the knee? Done.
Jackets sleeves shortened? Of course. Shorten the body of a jacket to fit your actual waist?
Hell yes. Replace the collar on a dress shirt? You betcha.
Listen to my buddy Ryan tell me how he shops for suits now: “The key is to buy something that fits perfectly in the shoulders and chest,” Ryan says. “It doesn’t matter how baggy it is everywhere else, just get it tailored!” It’s sort of amazing how dramatic the difference is after his tailor works her magic. It’s like one of those home improvement shows where they pull the veil back to reveal the final product and everyone oohs and awes. That oversized sack that looked like your dad dug it out of his closet suddenly fits you like it was made for your body.
Since Ryan spends so much money at his tailor every month, he has literally mastered the art of deciding what alterations are worth the money. Hemming a pair of trousers is usually only about $15-20, and is always worth doing. Having your trousers tapered down from the knee anywhere between 0-4 inches will run you about another $25-30, but can completely change the look and feel of your entire outfit.
Jackets can be similarly altered: Having your jacket waist taken in to fit your actual waist will cost you $50-75, but is a huge difference between something that looks like it fits and something that looks custom-tailored. Of course, if you spend enough money on a garment and plan on wearing it for years, you’ll likely pay for more extensive alterations. I once spent $120 altering a $300 Brooks Brothers sport coat, which initially sounded insane until I tried it on and realised my dream jacket actually fit my body.
That “custom fitted” sport coat I could’ve bought off Brooks’ MTM program would’ve cost me upwards of $800. But I wore that jacket altered for years, which means the per-wear cost of that alteration was literally pennies. Trust me, once you start tailoring clothes there is literally nothing you cant fix. (Unless, of course, you start with a shirt that fits your neck but not your sleeves….
Learn from my mistakes.) The other upside to knowing how to properly alter a garment is you can start bypassing traditional retail shopping all together. Do you know how tailor shops figure out what size clothing you are? Fit models.
Every brand of clothing uses different fit models when constructing their patterns, which is why certain brands will always fit you better than others. But if you spend some time googling “What brands use what fit models” you can save yourself years of blindly trying things on that will inevitably fail. For example: Most American brands fit bigger than European brands.
Some brands, like Banana Republic, now offer more than one fit in the same exact style. Want clothes with an athletic cut that aren’t insanely huge through the torso? BR’s Mason fit is for athletic dudes, while their Fulton fit is much slimmer through the chest.
Japanese brands run small overall, but often have disproportionately longer sleeves for their chest size, which can work great for some body types. Speaking of Japanese brands, having made-to-measure clothes shipped directly to your door has never been easier. In the past few years, made-to-measure clothing companies have busted down the door of menswear, making what was previously only available to finance bros or supreme Dandies into something regular guys can actually afford.
In fact, for many men I know who have odd proportions, made-to-measure is the ONLY way they’ll buy a suit. It’s not that much more expensive than buying something off the rack – expect to pay about 25-30% more – and being able to input your exact measurements means you never again have to worry about shopping for a suit. Companies like Indochino, Black Lapel, and Suit Supply’s made-to-measure offering have changed menswear forever.
Don’t forget your stalwarts either. For example, my friend Dave is 5’8” with about a 32-inch waist and what I affectionately call “chunk in all the right places.” He basically gave up on shopping for clothes years ago and now orders 90% of his casual clothing from Peter Manning. “Are they super trendy? Nope,” Dave says. “Will I ever be mistaken for shopping in the boys department again?
Also no. I’ll take that trade-off.” Sometimes you just gotta accept that certain brands work for your body type better than others, and learn to embrace it. And if all else fails, there’s always hacking your clothing.
Want your dress shirts to fit better? Collar extenders can give you an extra half inch of comfort. Adjustable waistbands on trousers, or trousers with side tabs, will allow for some extra padding if you gain or lose weight.
Magnetic shirt stays are a total game changer for shorter guys whose shirts always seem to want to pop out of their trousers. So what’s the biggest change I’ve noticed since I started really diving into this subject? I think it has to be the willingness of men to admit they have fitting issues.
The guy who would have otherwise sat in silence wearing trousers three sizes too big in hopes no one would notice now watches YouTube videos about altering clothes and asks other dudes for advice on the Mastodon fitting group. We are finally at a point where men feel comfortable being open about how ill-made clothes actually fit them, which is slowly starting to affect how brands are making clothes. How do I know guys are finally speaking up?
My email gets hit up on the reg by readers who think there’s something wrong with them for having body parts that don’t fit into Society’s Idea of a Clothes Size.
Let me tell you right now: If you’ve ever had to tweak, cuff, or alter a piece of clothing to make it fit your body, YOU ARE NORMAL. Your body is not shaped like the guy in that back collage.
You are not weird because your neck is too big for your sleeves to fit. You’re not some sort of bodybuilding freak because your drop is 12 inches instead of the 6-8 inches most off-the-rack suits are built to accommodate. Your body is not defective because you wear a large shirt neck but have to get your trousers tailored slim all the way down to a size 28 waist.
Fit problems suck. But they don’t have to be the end-all-be-all of your wardrobe. Beyond this laundry list of helpful hints I’ve compiled from dudes who hate getting dressed almost as much as I do, my number one piece of advice is this: Don’t be afraid to get clothes altered, know which brands fit you best, and remember that if a piece of clothing doesnt fit off the rack, it’s not you, it’s the clothes fitting you.
Wear your crew neck proudly. And when you do find something that fits your insane, not-at-all-average-body? Buy three of them.
