Stranded on heights of fashion

Comment by GILLIAN ROACH*

I'm depressed. I've been shopping for winter clothes and come home empty-handed, yet again.

It really cuts your fashion options to be a tall woman. When you're 1.8m, nothing fits. Trousers and sleeves too short, waists too high, darts in the wrong place, proportions wrong. When it comes to clothes, tall women are out in the cold (or at least our ankles are).

Clothes shopping used to be such a pleasant diversion, but it has become progressively less satisfying over the past few years. I've been choosing clothes only because they fit. Not because they are gorgeous, or the height of fashion, or they really suit me, but because they are somewhere in the vague region of nearly almost long enough.

I wonder what it would be like to be 1.7m like average New Zealand women, whom clothes are made for.

I ask my tall, elegant mother for advice and she points to the dusty sewing Machine in the spare room. "Make your own clothes," she says.

I pout. "I don't want to sew my own clothes. I love shopping. I want to try things on and see how they look. Mum," I say, "your pants are a bit short."

"I know," she says, "and why can I never find a nightie that reaches past my shins?"

I think back to when I was young, when it didn't matter that my skirts were shorter than anyone else's because my legs were so much longer than anyone else's. When my stomach was flat so it didn't matter if my shirt didn't quite meet up with my trousers.

You can wear anything when you're young. But things change as you get older. You become a sad fashion victim if your skirts are up around your thighs and your post-children tummy undulates over your waistband. That's without mentioning the horror of short trousers. Unintentional three-quarter pants are tragic.

A short friend once offered to give me all the bottoms of her trouser legs, which she has to cut off anyway. She also had some sleeve cuffs that might come in useful and endless unused lengths of bra strap. We decided the bra straps might come in handy for pinging unhelpful sales assistants who suggested I try the men's department for the extra length and that my petite friend try shopping at Pumpkin Patch.

When I look around I don't see a sea of average-height women, with me towering above them like a 1.8m lighthouse. No, I see women ranging from very small to very tall and everything in between.

So why is it the longest jeans have only a 84cm inside-leg? Why do clothing sizes expand outwards from size 8 to 28 with barely a change in length? Why are bra straps never quite long enough, thereby hoisting my breasts to an unnatural altitude?

The growth in boutique stores for plus-sizes is finally catering for larger-sized women and the fashion situation has improved for petite women with the influx of Asian immigrants and imported clothing. Even pregnant women have greater choice.

So, in a country of top netballers, when will the clothing industry realise some New Zealand women are tall?

* Gillian Roach is a tall Auckland woman.