Is This the Next Big Thing in Tall Fashion? | And Why Tall Clothing Is STILL Lacking ft. Everything Tall

If you're a tall girlie listening to this right now, you know how difficult it can be to find tall clothing. I mean, how many of us have scoured the internet for hours, even days on end, trying to find places, whether in-store or online, that provide clothing items for our long limbs? And sometimes we find places that provide those, or we think they provide them, only to purchase items that never actually reach our wrists or ankles. And these frustrations have led to the rise of small tall brands, or brands that exclusively sell true tall clothing. I've spoken about this before. Additionally, this has led to something else that I argue is a bit lesser known, which are tall fashion marketplaces. Think an online mall housing a bunch of tall brands, which I can imagine is every tall person's dream. Today, I am joined by Sonia, a fellow tall girly and co-founder of Everything Tall, which is a tall marketplace. And in this episode, we are going to talk about the recent launch of Everything Tall, the story behind it, and why many tall women struggle to find variety when it comes to tall fashion. So without further ado, let's get into it. Good morning, everybody. You are currently listening to a Tall Girls podcast hosted by a tall girl named India. Today, I am joined by a very, very special guest. Her name is Sonia. She is the co-founder of a brand called Everything Tall. Hi, Sonia. Hi, India. How are you? I'm doing fantastic. How are you doing today? Yeah, great. Thanks for having me. Thank you so much for joining me today. Please take a second to introduce yourself to the audience. Yeah, sure. So my name is Sonia. I'm from Gloucestershire in England. As you said, I'm the co-founder of Everything Tall and I am a six foot tall girl. Oh, and you know, being six foot tall, I'm pretty sure as a tall girly, you've had very interesting experiences, maybe growing up, maybe in your everyday adult life. Would you like to tell us about any of your experiences, the good, the bad, the ugly? What was it like for you? Yeah, sure. So I realised that I was tall really early on in my life, as many people have probably. I was around 10 when I started to notice that I was taller than most of my friends. And then by the time I was like 12 or 13, you know, I was always in the back of the school photos with all of like the boys. And that continued for the rest of my life. I think for me, though, there is like a weird period when you become a teenager and where anything that makes you different gets you picked on. So for me, that was obviously height. And then when I was 13, we emigrated with my family from Poland to England, which meant that I was then the foreign kid and the tall kid. So that was an absolute nightmare, you know, the one who doesn't speak English, but it's always described as, oh, the tall Polish girl. So I think it took me a little while to come to terms with that. And then I think for me, things changed when I reached my 20s and became a little bit more comfortable in my own skin and with myself and kind of built my confidence so I now do feel very differently about my height but like I said it took a while because I had this for years and years and years I had this misconception that being tall makes you less feminine or less desirable or less pretty because you're not this dainty little flower you're kind of six foot and taller than most so yeah So it was an interesting period growing up. And I think for me, one thing that I was reflecting on recently is that actually I was definitely wearing kitten heels before they became fashionable. So I was wearing kitten heels when they were completely not fashionable back in like 2006. Oh my gosh. Which is crazy. So yeah, trendsetter over here trying to hide my hide by wearing kitten heels. So I'm very, very pleased to see them booming in the fashion industry at the moment. That's actually hilarious. You're basically, you started the trend before the trend even came to be. And it's so funny because it's like the smaller heels, like, you know, tall women wanting to wear heels, but not necessarily wanting to be as tall as they already are. And then on top of that, you have the cropped pants or capris trend, how that's coming back in style. But again, back in the day, when there wasn't that many tall brands, tall women would have to wear pants that didn't go to their ankles. So it's just funny to see how certain trends where it's a tall girl struggle or it's something that kind of hide our height is in style now. It's just interesting how times change is what I'm trying to say. Absolutely. You welcome the fashion world. We made those trends. Capris and kitten heels. Exactly. Tall girlies are trendsetters, period. Now, I do have a little follow-up question. What was something involving your height? It could be a question. It could be a comment. What was something involving your height that you absolutely hated hearing? It's crazy to say that I still hear it now. And I think outside of the typical gosh-it-all for a girl, the one I hate the most is, oh, it must be really hard for you to find a boyfriend. And there's a number of reasons why I hate that. And it doesn't help my case that I'm currently single, but that's by the by. However, the reason why I hate that is I think It reinforces that narrative that somehow being tall makes you less desirable or less attractive or limits your romantic options, which is fantastic. so far from the truth. But as a young woman, if you hear that over and over again, it will absolutely make you live in this flawed reality that somehow you're not desirable. And I think it's really damaging. And I still hear it now and I still hate it. The only difference is now that I'm confident and I own my height, I pull people up on it and I will absolutely stand up for myself. But as an 18, 19, 20 year old, I was in no position to do that. Yeah, that's like a very strange thing to say. Trying to say, oh, because you're tall, you're not going to find like a suitable or like a partner in general. Like, number one, life does not revolve around finding a significant other. Let's also put that out there. But trying to make it seem as though, oh, because we're tall, if we're into men, oh, men are not going to find that attractive. We're not going to find a husband. That's just absolutely disgusting because there are people out there who love us and are not insecure within themselves because of our height or just find our height to be outrageous and so forth. So people, that's all I could say. Yeah. So true, so true. And I think there is this misperception as well that we would only date taller. And for many women, that is a preference, of course. But equally, there is so much more to people and individuals than their height. And I think that's why I hate that comment so much. Yes, and that definitely goes both ways, not just your partner, but also yourself. So hoping that, well, I'm hoping that you don't hear that anymore, right? Well, I think last time I heard it was about 12 months ago. So not that long ago. But we're standing up for ourselves nowadays. And I encourage everyone to do that. Period. As we should. Now, you are also the co-founder of Everything Tall. Can you please share the story behind the brand? What inspired you to start the brand? And also kind of what makes you guys unique to other brands? brands and tall marketplaces? Yeah, of course. So as you would have heard, obviously for me, this was very much based on experience and something that I have seen and have been through as a tall woman. But for the listeners who don't know, Everything Tall isn't a tall clothing brand in a traditional sense. It is an online space, a platform and a marketplace that where a number of amazing tall brands are brought together to make shopping experience by tall women and men so much easier. And for us, we wanted to make that experience enjoyable and quick and an experience which puts at the forefront a number of brands. And then what makes us different is really interesting because there is absolutely a number of amazing marketplaces already out there. I think what we found is the difficulty was is that they were serving very specific markets. So there was some great marketplaces in US and Canada. There's some great ones in Australia. What was lacking for me and from my experience of talking to others was was that kind of truly global presence. So that's what we wanted to tackle first and foremost. We wanted to build a site where brands that ship to your country were available to you. And then speaking of brands, for me, this is a real kind of product of passion. I think, you know, I used to own a small brand. And funnily enough, it wasn't a tall clothing brand. It was a soft brand. But nevertheless, what we... What I often found through that experience is just how challenging running a clothing brand can be in terms of getting found by your customers. And if a platform existed that could help me to reach those customers, the process of joining it was really difficult and therefore many brands didn't feel able to jump on board and therefore reap the benefits. So we took a really long time in ensuring that the work that we do with brands is really easy and it's automated and it doesn't take a lot of time. You kind of jump on, you sign up and then everything else is kind of automated. So your tracking, your shipments, your inventory and all of those things are done for you so that all you can do is reap the benefits. And I think for me, that was really, really important. But the biggest, I suppose one thing that I would say that for me, the biggest philosophy behind everything tool was that Tall shoppers choosing clothing at the moment ask themselves the question of, does it fit me? And that's, you know, we all do it. You're looking at the product and the first thing that goes through your head is, will this be long enough? Or will this fit my waist? Or will the elbows be where they need to be? For me, the philosophy needed to shift and we needed to be asking ourselves the question, do I actually like this? rather than, does this fit me? And I think that's a really big shift, and that only comes from having a really wide choice. So that's what everything tall as a marketplace do, provides you with enough choice to ask yourself the most important question of, do I like this? Full stop. And I think that it's very interesting. Well, for starters, one, the idea of a tall marketplace, especially because whenever you're scrolling on social media or just living your day-to-day life and you happen to meet other tall women and so forth, that a common thing is they don't know where to shop. They don't know where to find tall clothing and so forth. So the idea of literally having one specific place to just shop multiple tall clothing brands is honestly amazing. I mean, we have places like Tall Size. They have clothing and shoes. There was another one called, I think it's Haudier UK. I don't even know if I'm pronouncing that properly. Haudier UK. Yeah. And then also specifically for shoes, there was Goa shoes, but I don't, I haven't heard from them like recently either. So it's like there are marketplaces out there that kind of house several tall brands in one. So it's very interesting to see how that's kind of on the rise while there's also individual tall clothing brands on the rise. And you kind of brought up this good idea about asking like, oh, Instead of asking, does it fit me? Is it long enough? Asking, do I like this? And it's another interesting point that I think I've done an episode on this a very long time ago about how a lot of tall women kind of function, especially when shopping, kind of function in this scarcity mindset. They go about it in this scarcity mindset of, oh, I'm going to have a hard time finding something that I really like, or I'm going to have a hard time finding something that I can fit in, and I'm going to just buy anything and just hope for the best. Or they hold on to, like me, for example, I had a really bad problem with jeans. Like, I have kept... all like of the pairs of jeans that I've had that were long enough since probably like sixth grade. And you know, over time, as you get older, especially as a woman, your body changes, and you need to be updating your clothes as your body changes. But it can also be hard to let things go when it's like, oh, I don't know if I'm going to find something long enough. So kind of shifting that mindset, I feel like will definitely be very helpful for a lot of tall women and just be very life-changing, I will say, in the shopping experience. Yeah, and shopping should be joyful. It shouldn't be the kind of systematically going through the filters as soon as you reach a landing page of a clothing site. So yes, if I can personally play a very small part in bringing joy to the shopping experience, what a privilege. Yes, and that you definitely are. And going on top of, like, we're talking about frustrations here. you know, and shopping should be joyful. One of the bigger frustrations that tall women kind of have when it comes to shopping that makes the experience less joyful is when we find something that is long enough, but we don't necessarily have styles, a lot of styles to choose from. We may find a pair of jeans or we may find a long sleeve top and oh, it's only available in black and gray. Or the jeans are only in like a dark wash and wash black and that's it. Or maybe they don't have a lot of silhouettes. I think that's the correct term when describing jeans. Like some tall women complain about baggy jeans. I know. barrel style jeans are also in style you know what I mean um different even flare jeans things like that and so I just wanted to ask why do you think that tall fashion has historically lacked this variety that a lot of us are seeking. I think that's a really great question and I often ask myself that question um what let me think on this so for me commercially I think the problem is that despite the fact that we are, as a general population, statistically getting taller, being tall is still considered to be a niche market. So that would be a niche market of consumers. And what happens when a specific area of a market is considered to be a minority market, retailers and producers will take less risks And I think that's what happens in terms of the lack of choice. So because they're trying to minimise the risks in production, because we are considered for one reason or another a minority or a niche market, they create fewer products or fewer colours or they create safer designs that they believe will appeal to the largest proportion of the tall market and therefore their collections are so much smaller. And I think another problem that exists beyond that is that real brands have clocked on to the fact that simply adding length to a pair of jeans is not enough. Like a proper tall clothing requires genuine thought because it's not just your ankle length, right? It's your waist position. It's things like your knee position, your torso length. where your jeans rise to because our waist is in a different position. And I think when they realize that, that makes developing truly tall, inclusive sizing much more difficult than creating kind of standard size pieces. And the result of that is what you've just described. You know, we find a pair of jeans that we love. We buy it in all the colors that are available. And that's basically us for the next five years. And it just, it doesn't feel, it doesn't feel like a fair end of the deal, right? Like there must be a better way of doing this. And I think all the mainstream brands need to start recognising tall women are not a minority market. And we need to stop being perceived as such. And in the absence of that, what people like me can do is create more visibility for brands which have clocked on to that a little while ago and are actually creating genuinely amazing garments that we can wear. Yeah, and I think that you definitely brought up a very interesting point talking about how we're kind of getting taller as a population, especially women. I mean, obviously it varies like where you live and so forth. But even when you're living in a major city like me in New York City and so forth, it's like you're finding taller people in those areas. And it's not even just a thing of people are getting taller. People, there are also people who have very long limbs. There are people who may be average height or maybe on the shorter side, but they still have longer than normal or normal, longer than average. I don't know, longer than normal sounds a little bit mean or weird to say, but longer than average limbs. And they still would need to shop in the tall section in order to find something that's long enough. So it's like, it's concerning that brands are not necessarily adapting to this, especially because people are more than willing to spend money on options that are going to fit them and flatter them and so forth. So I just think that it's amazing that you guys are, instead of waiting for these bigger brands to adapt and just kind of taking the reins and doing it yourselves. And yeah, You also said towards the end about creating visibility for the brands that are actually able to do the work that we've been needing bigger brands to do for the longest time. And I'm sure as you heard, the elevated closet has closed down its doors. I believe another brand, I think it's called Above the Crowd, if I'm not mistaken, has also shut down recently as well. And, you know, these are brands that have been around for years, like almost a decade and so forth. And it's sad to see that brands like these are doing the work to provide stuff for us that we need but they're never the how do I phrase this well, yes, they're closing down their doors, but also many people don't really hear about them. Like there's a lot of Toleman out there who don't know that these types of brands exist. And I wanted to ask, what do you think is preventing some of these brands from getting the visibility that they deserve and growing and scaling and, you know, remaining open long-term? Yeah. And I think first and foremost, it's really important to acknowledge what a loss those established brands leaving the market is. And I'm sure there'd be a number of shoppers that remember elevated closets and probably have their pieces in their wardrobes that will truly be quite sudden by that loss and to not be able to go and shop with them. So yeah, first and foremost, it's awful. And if we could prevent all of those brands closing down, you know, we absolutely would. But I think one of the big reasons for that is that Many independent tall brands are solving the problem really well. They've got great pieces and great mark and great kind of garments and a really loyal, small often, but loyal following. What they lack is the brand awareness. And the reason for that is I think there is a, there's almost like a vicious cycle that small brands find themselves in. So you've got at the top of that cycle is that the customers don't know that they exist. That's the first problem, right? And then the brands therefore struggle to acquire more customers and make more money, which makes growing really difficult, which means they don't have the money to invest in advertising, to break through the noise of social media, which means that the customers can't find them. And they just find themselves in this perpetual cycle. And what we also often find is that and this is getting quite technical, but it is one of the things that Everything Tool is trying to solve. When you're a small brand, you're trying to break through SEO, so the search engine optimizations for those who don't know, in very generic fashion terms like dresses and trousers and getting Google to recognise in its own right that what you do is tall dresses. And doing that well from a technical perspective, you know, I'm really lucky I'm from a tech background, but if you are not, if you are a non-technical person, understanding how to do that so that if somebody goes to chat GPT and searches for where can I find tall dresses or inseam of 38 inches, there is ways of getting yourself positions there, but only if you know how to, or only if you have a marketing team or an SEO team. And those amazing creators behind those brands are often a single, you know, a single person or a very small team. They just don't have the capacity and the funds to do that. And, you means money, money means they could invest in it. But if you if you're not even getting the visibility in the first place, it is like a it's a chicken and egg situation. And my heart goes out to them. It really does. But I think that's the problem. It's a vicious cycle, and a lack of technical knowledge on how to do it. Yeah, I think that's a very common thing with a lot of like solopreneurs and small businesses. It's just you're only one person, you know, you can't, do everything in a day, because at the end of the day, you still have to be a human being, you still have to rest, you still have to do other things outside of, you know, your business. I mean, unless you love it so much, you want to do a 24 seven, that's totally up to you. But again, we all need a break. And we can't, there's only 24 hours in a day, and there's only seven days in a week. So we can't, we can't do everything. But I do think that this is where this is where marketplaces have a really important role to play. Because Instead of every small, tall brand that exists having to independently find the same customer, what you've said right at the start, having a place which becomes the go-to where customers already know that's where they can find tall products makes it easier potentially for a really large pool of brands. And I think there's power in numbers. So that's what we're hoping to build. Exactly. And that's, I was literally just gonna say that as well. Like, that's what everything tall is all about, you know, being able to give these brands the visibility that they so rightfully deserve so that they can help the population that they're targeting. And I want to thank you so much on, you know, answering these questions, providing your insights, as well as talking a little bit about everything tall and so forth. And I do want to end off with this question. What is one piece of advice that you would like to give to the tall girlies listening right now who may be struggling with their self-esteem because. Of their height? Yeah, and what a great question. And do you know what? It comes back to what would I have wanted to hear probably before I became a little bit more comfortable with my height, right? And I think I would tell them that the thing that's making you feel different now is very likely something that you will grow to value about yourself. I mean, it's what happened to me and I'm not claiming that it's going to be a universal experience for everybody, but I have an inkling that that if you don't like your height or if you're feeling slightly uncomfortable in taking up the space that you so truly deserve, that might change as you surround yourself and witness more tall women really owning it, right? And I think when you're younger or, you know, there'll be women out there who might be in their 30s or 40s and still not owning it. But I think some of us desperately don't want to stand out. And if you're tall, you don't have a choice. you will stand out regardless. And I think it's easier said than done for me to sit here and say, oh, embrace your height, because we know it's not that simple. But for me, I'm quite pragmatic and quite logical. And I think we shouldn't be making ourselves smaller, whether that's kind of practically or metaphorically, to make someone else feel more comfortable. So if you want to wear the heels, you've already taken up the space, so own it. And I actually think that In a world where everyone almost feels like a copycat of themselves and everyone else, if you can stand out, kudos to you, go own it. Thank you so much for sharing that. I really do appreciate that. And also super sidetracked question. I do want to ask, everything tall, does that only house, well, I mean, shoes are a part of clothing, but do you guys also house like shoe brands, like extended size shoe brands as well? Yeah, absolutely. So we have. roughly around a hundred shoes and footwear products in our catalog at the moment. So take a look, all inclusive sizing going up all the way up to European 46, I believe. So yes, absolutely we do. Y'all hear that? Listen, we all know that the tall girlies also have trouble finding shoes. So everything tall is, you know what, actually just do like a quick plug. Where can we find you? Where can we find everything tall? This is the time to plug yourself. Yeah, sure. So you can find us across all social media platforms. We're at Everything Tool. And if you want to find us online, it's www.everythingtool.co.uk. And the reason for that, obviously, we're born out of the UK, but we serve globally. So please don't be alarmed. Yes, guys, they serve globally. Please go check them out. I'm going to include all of the links in the description and I'm going to plug myself as well at a tall girls podcast. Literally everywhere. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook. You know where to find me. Google knows where to find me and so forth. And thank you so, so much for joining me today and talking about everything tall and giving us that great advice and talking about your life. um talking about some amazing insights within tall fashion and the fashion industry and so forth i really appreciate it and i honestly think this was a great episode i. Agree it's been an absolute pleasure thank you so much for having me Of course and until you guys check out everything tall or until you guys hit us up and so forth we will catch you guys in the next one good night and goodbye