Can you live with looking a bit like an American college student? Should tops and pants in a seemingly limitless kaleidescope of beige and navy get you hot under the collar then I’m sure you’re already a regular customer of the GAP, and if not then you’ll certainly at least be aware of one of planet earth’s biggest brands. One fact may not be aware of however is that they do sell very long jeans.

Now, I may have been a little harsh about the GAP. While not particularly exciting, their clothes are well-made. Also they do some pretty decent shirts, if you like a checked shirt, which in truth I do. The thing is with shirts and being 6′ 9″, you do need to keep the sleeves permanently rolled up a bit so as to create the illusion that it actually fits. This I have done for as long as I can remember – in fact I’m unsure I’ve had a properly fitting shirt in my entire adult life. For instructions on how to roll up the sleeves on your shirt see this helpful but ridiculous guide: http://www.ehow.com/how_4968988_roll-up-long-sleeve-shirt.html

But back to the jeans. While rolling up your sleeves has the potential to make you look ultra-casual, a man’s man, at ease in his surroundings with an atomic handshake and stubble that can cut steel – doing the same to your trousers just makes you look like a goon. As does wearing trousers than descend no further than the ankle.

Now as you’re aware, finding good jeans for the very tall is an ongoing struggle and so it’s been welcome to discover they can be found at the GAP. They do a decent range in a 36″ inside leg in most stores – of which there are an enormous amount. On the downside these are only in a 36″ waist and upwards, which seems strange, but you can’t have everything.

Supposedly www.gap.eu will soon be able to send you their wares direct to your home, but for now if you want these jeans you must leave the safety and comfort of your living room, hit the bus into town with the hoi polloi and purchase them physically. Scary, I know, but see it as an adventure.

I find it’s soul-destroying enough locating trainers in a UK size 12 when traipsing around the shops, so for people with feet that exceed this particular cutoff point finding a decent pair must be a kind of living nightmare. There’s a few places online which have some proper brands in larger sizes, but somewhere I’ve used myself that it’s unlikely you’ve come across is a skate shop deep in the industrial North West, Barrow-in-Furness to be precise, called Kate’s Skates.

Check out their website www.kateskates.co.uk In particular it’s a great place to find Vans and Converse trainers, although they stock other brands too. I’ve just had a look at the website which lists the sizes they have available and at the moment and currently in stock are various Vans trainers up to a UK size 15 and Converse up to UK17.

I recall making an order with them over the phone a couple of years ago and being told that they can order in more or less all sizes of Vans from the Czech Republic. Perhaps Prague is heavily populated with enormous skaters, or perhaps that’s just where they’re manufactured, but either way Kate’s Skates have a direct line to provide you with some quality ginormous footwear.

I had long thought that the only place to get well-fitting smart clothes for the tall would be going to a tailor and having them custom make you a suit. Of course specialist purveyors of extra long clothing like John Banks, High & Mighty and the Big Man’s Shop all sell business clothes but in much the same way that their casual gear is seemingly aimed at some hitherto unidentified demographic that have no interest in how they look, their business dress stinks.

Right then, I’m going to begin this post with a disclaimer. If you baulk at the idea of spending a hundred quid on a pair of jeans then it’s better that you don’t read past this point. I too until recently would have felt the same, in fact I recall an occasion a few years ago my girlfriend bought some Diesel jeans for 120 notes that left me gobsmacked, but I have now learned the error of my ways and come round to the way of thinking that a pair of jeans that fit amazingly and are extremely well-made are perhaps worth the money.

One place the extra tall man is likely to find this previously mythical pair is at G Star Raw, a cool Dutch brand working primarily in denim with catwalk associations and flagship stores in London, New York and Amsterdam. While it’s undoubtedly quite an expensive brand, they do make clothes that you’ll be happy to wear all the time and feel good wearing – as opposed to many of the clothes sold by specialist tall retailers which are often a similar price but are without style or quality.

There’s an almost endless list of places that stock G Star jeans and other clothes but if you’re looking for the longer sizes your best bet is probably to go into one of their own stores which you’ll find in most major UK cities. Have a look at http://storelocator.g-star.com/ to find the nearest one to you.

The stores are all franchised so there may be some differences from one to the next, but my personal experiences of shopping in the Covent Garden and Carnaby Street stores in London have been blissfully pain-free. They have incredibly helpful staff that are happy to go an find your size, which they pretty much always seem to have, once you’ve chosen the style you like the look of from their in-store display – thus saving you the tedium of having to search through the racks.

There’s also a G Star discount store in the Bicester designer outlet village in Oxfordshire, about an hour out of London, where you can get some great discounts. www.bicestervillage.com/en_GB/

If you prefer to deal with computers than humans and buy your clothes from the internet then a good place to look for G Star stuff is on ASOS (www.asos.com) where you can search by brand, or by size across all brands, which is handy.

G-Star Raw website: http://g-star.com/flash/content.html

They do most of their jeans styles up to a 36″ inside leg, apart from seemingly the extra skinny fits – which in fairness would look mental on really tall people anyway so is probably a good thing. It can something of a hassle digging through rack after rack of jeans to find your size so make sure you enter the building in a patient frame of mind for the sake of your own sanity. That said though, their jeans are mostly about 30 quid, which is great, and overall they have a decent range of styles so it’s well worth investing the required time and effort.

They of course stock everything else from t shirts, shirts and tops to underwear and belts. They also have some of their own brand footwear but never have anything above a UK size 11.

I’ve also bought pretty good suit trousers at H&M in the past which have served me well, and at 6′ 9″ they’re not often easy to come by. They do appear to have less of these than they used to but it’s still worth a go, you may get lucky…

Currently you can’t order from their UK website, which is a shame, but H&M have stores in all major UK cities and most large towns so you’re unlikely to be a million miles away from one of their shops. You can use the store locator on their website to find your nearest.

www.hm.com/gb