What would you prefer? Being tall!

As someone who is taller than the average man, I would like to pose to you a question. If you were looking for a pair of jeans that fitted, you wander around shops looking again and again for that perfect fit to then finally stumble on one pair that fit you like you wish every pair ever could. There is just sadly 2 issues with the the 2 pairs of these jeans you can find in the whole world. 

Pair one is too long. So do you spend extra money and find someone who can shorten them for you? But you worry will they look right shortened, but how can they not? 

Pair 2 are too short, maybe you could go for a cropped looking pair, but you know there will only be certain times in the year you can wear them, when it is warm and when you have been bothered to shave your legs. 

But what would you prefer to do?


Now imagine these jeans are now a dress. A dress that should be a maxi and instead it cuts down your calf half way. Could you possibly add some material to the shorter dress, maybe some netting or lace? But it will never look right. 

These are sadly the issue taller people have every time they buy something. I suppose they could always go and buy in the mens section, like I always had to when I was a child and teen, but nothing fits correctly, a mans shape is completely different to a woman's. Remember this when you moan about clothes being too long, some of us can never get them long enough! 

Clothes shopping list

I am an avid fan of online shopping, not only do I prefer it to going to a shop where you have to deal with other people, but there is a much wider range of plus size clothing. Here is a list of some of the sites I use.

Retail name                           Sizes                                  

Curvissa                               14 - 32                         

New Look                            18 - 32 

                
Very                                     12 - 32    

 
Matalan                               18 - 28

Simply be                            12 - 36

Evans                                   14 - 32

Fashion World                     12 - 36

Yours Clothing                    14 - 36

Lovedrobe                           14 - 32

Pink Clove                          14 - 24

Marisota                              12 - 34

M & Co                               12 - 32 

Fatphrocks                           14 - 28

BBW Couture                      14 - 28

Bonprix                                14 - 32

Scarlett and Jo                     10 - 32

H&M                                    18 - 30

Dorothy Perkins.                  16 - 28

Navabi                                  16 - 32

Less than 10 pounds             14 - 30

Zalando                                 16 - 28

Asos                                      14 - 34

Ivans clothing                       14 - 36

Love fashion                         12 - 32

Ullapopken                            16 - 42

Wearall                                  16 - 32

Marks and Spencer                18 - 30

Junarose                                 12 - 28

Next                                        12 - 26

Plus Size Lagenlook               16 - 32

Crazy Clearance                     12 - 34

Everything 5 Pounds              14 - 32

Just curvy                               12 - 26

Laredoute                                14 - 32

House of Fraser                       14 - 26

Vidamoda                                14 - 28

BooHoo                                   12 - 28

Apples and Pears                     18 -32

Izabel                                       16 - 28

Elvi                                          12 - 28

River Island                             18 - 28

In The Style                             12 - 28 

Lady V London                        12 - 32

Although there are a lot more online fashion retailers out there that have plus size options, I have tried to only show the ones that go up to a 28 or above.

My thoughts on Scarlett & Jo

I have long admired their dresses only from afar, because I find it hard to justify spending over £30 on a dress, but their sales offer great savings.
Earlier this year I managed to buy a dress from them and fell totally in love with it, so when they recently had another sale, I was quick to see what I could afford. I ordered 3 lovely dresses which came within a few days and I couldn't wait to try them on.
The first dress was a printed hanky hem dress:  http://www.scarlettandjo.com/



It is a lovely fabric and so very comfy to wear. I find the length on myself quite good, being 6ft tall it is always hard to get dresses long enough. I also ordered it in a size 22, Scarlett & Jo are very generous in their sizing as I am normally a size 26/28 these days. This Hanky Hem dress is amazing and I would recommend it to anyone who likes this style.

One of the other dresses I decided to try out was the Jacquard Fit and Flare Dress:
http://www.scarlettandjo.com




It is a very pretty dress and a lovely material, but I have found it not as comfy or stretchy as the Hanky Hem. I have massive bingo wings and find they need extra tugging and squashing to get even slightly comfy. I am very glad that I ordered it in a size 24, and for my arms I probably could have done with it a size or 2 bigger, but the body fitted amazingly and it was also a great length.

I would recommend anyone to buy from Scarlett & Jo, their clothing is very flattering, very plus size friendly and I cannot wait to try more of their clothing, especially the range for taller people.

Asos Dresses

I have been ordering too many clothes of late, Trawling through most of the well known sites, finding so many dresses and tops I would love to wear, but know I won't. Why you must think? Well because I am not only a size 28, but I am also 6 feet tall. Along with that I have huge upper arms, around 30 inches at the widest part, so I hide them all the time. They never see the fresh air unless I'm having a shower. But in clothes they are at all times to be well hidden.
You may think these things are easily done with the huge range of Plus Size clothes. Thankfully I no longer have just two options like I did in the 90's, which were a very old fashioned Evans and fat man clothing shops, which were few and far between. Also the only things I could ever manage to fit into were jeans and some kind of top. Evans of course had dresses and skirts but they were never long enough. They were also usually a lovely pattern that even my Nan would have thought twice about!
Thankfully here in 2016 there are a lot more plus size stores especially online. So I had a trawl through them and found a number of super 'fat arm friendly' dresses in various materials. I have found my style has gone towards leggings with a dress. You possibly might wonder why I would I would use a dress as a long top or tunic, but a long top or tunic on me is much too short. I would easily wear one of those as a top with a long skirt (that is if I could find a skirt long enough) damn my long torso!
So I came across a couple of dresses on asos.com - the first being a lovely long black stretch dress with small flowers:

This dress was so comfy and easy to wear, I loved the length. The one downfall for both items is that I had to sew the wrap the top together to prevent my bra being on show to all and sundry. I can imagine if you used tit tape or had less boobage than me (pretty much nothing) then you might get away with it. The other issue with this comfy dress is the rolled hem, which is pretty but see the white line at the bottom of the dress - that's the underside of the fabric showing. 

My second dress, in navy blue, was shorter and came with a very long band tie. It was lovely to wear although I was (as always) worried about my arms. It's not that they don't fit, but that the sleeves are not quite long enough for me. I could not really see the point of the long tie belt either, I'm sure it looked fine from the back, but I don't think it added much to the overall look of the dress. 

 I shall definitely be looking out for more asos.com items - not only are they very stretchy and comfy, but the price is really great! I do though wish they would use bigger models for their Curve Plus size range - it would make it much easier to realise what those items would look like on me! Please check them out and maybe take the plunge like I did and no doubt shall be again!