A Tall Haul - Clothes Shopping for Tall Men in San Francisco (Part II)

Another trip to San Francisco recently gave me the opportunity to revisit the shopping opportunities for tall men, not to mention taking in some excellent dim sum in Chinatown and a bracingingly windy walk around Sutro Park. But this time, in contrast to my last visit to San Francisco in January, I did manage to find some quality options for tall men's clothing.

I started Lucky Brand Jeans, which was an unlucky choice. After dodging between low hanging ceiling ornaments, a helpful sales assistant pointed out that I was wasting my time, as longer jeans are only available online. I later checked and they have up to 36.5 inch inseam but with a fairly limited range of colors and styles. Buckle also stock some Lucky styles with the extra long inseam and when I looked, the Mesa style was on sale.

Eddie Bauer was also a success, with shirts and polo shirts in Large Tall and XLT sizes, but longer pants are only available online (up to 37 inch inseam). There were some nice casual summery styles that would probably suit tall slim men up to around 6'5".

Nordstrom was my next port of call, and thanks to several very helpful sales assistants I found quite a treasure trove of jeans, casual shirts and pants (luckily it was a quiet day, because I might never have found where these things were hidden if they didn't have time to show me!).

A reasonable selection of extended size shirts included LT and XLT sizes from the French high end retailer Faconnable (the blue one below is on sale right now) and the new shirt label Thomas Dean. The slight surprise was the range of Hugo Boss slim fit shirts that would be great for tall slim men as they are cut very long in the sleeve and body (the left hand picture below is from Zappos and has a 36 inch sleeve with opton for Long sizes, the middle one is from Nordstrom). They are not cheap, but well worth checking out, especially as they are on sale right now. Nordstrom also have their own range of shirts with longer sleeves which are reasonably priced. Online, these are marked as tall sizes, and if you are tall and slim, I strongly recommend the Tailored or Trim fittings, which have less of the tent-like appearance that seems to come with a lot of larger shirt sizes in the US.

For jeans, I was told that Adriano Goldschmeid and a new brand, Wörn, both offer long inseams, but I did not see any of these.

Going down the road and a little bit downmarket, I also checked out Men's Wearhouse and was positively surprised. The store is not an attractive place - very crowded and a little bit run down. However, the challenges of squeezing between an obstacle course of tightly packed clothes racks was made worthwhile by some reasonable options for lower priced clothing in tall sizes.

Most of their clothes are own brands (e.g. Pronto Uomo) but there are some better known brands hidden away like Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger. There was a good selection of dress shirts with 36 inch and 37 inch sleeves, with plain colors but also some striped shirts and shirts in finer quality twill.

The range of pants was quite extensive, and most were unhemmed so could be finished in at least 36 inch inseam, and possibly up to 38 inches. The same was the case in Nordstrom, where the sales assistant said that all trousers could definitely be finished to 36 inches, and maybe 38 inch inseam, depending on the style.

Outside the US

Most of these stores are very much US based, but see our Tall Clothing Directory for guidance on which of these stores have online presence and where they ship to.