And in general I’m just not a guy that likes to go to natural extremes to just make sure you click a button. It’s hard to call them essential, you’ll survive without them, you know, as long as you continue to eat and drink.

However, I do think suspenders are very useful on a big guy and can really help keep an entire outfit neat and together.

First lets just deal with the abdominal / waist problem. There are different types of big guys as I’ve said in previous posts. Some abdomens are soft, some are firm. Some tend to hang down low, others higher up. Some tend to protrude around the sides and some tend to be more circular. Now, In general your waist, when wearing tailored cloths, is up around your umbilicus (belly button). I do know for many big guys though, when wearing jeans and most other clothes with a belt, you wear them under your belly so the waist measurement there is significantly smaller than what you get if you measure around your true waist. When a tailor measures you they measure the true waist so the pants should sit naturally at your waist.

Now how this looks really depends on your individual body habitus. Obviously the two options to hold up your pants are a belt and suspenders. For some big guys a belt works quite well. Not infrequently, however, I see two major problems with a belt.
The first is on guys with more of a soft abdomen the belt tends to crunch up the pants and pull them tighter than they are meant to be worn, basically creating a hourglass shape where one really doesn’t exist.
The other problem is when the belt tends to slide down off of your waist and falls right under your abdomen (i.e. where you may wear jeans).

Pants on a suit or other tailored clothes should be specifically tailored to be at your waist level and fall naturally to your feet ending at your shoes in the break of your choice (none/half/full). When they fall down lower or are pulled up higher by a belt they no longer fit at the leg in the correct manner. In my case, when I wear a belt, they tend to fall right under my abdomen, which causes the cuffs to fall so far down, I tend to step on them and trip myself like an overweight Shaggy from Scooby Doo.

So enter suspenders or braces if you are European. They hold the weight of the pant on your shoulders and allow the pant to fall naturally around your waist.

One major caveat: Don’t use clip on suspenders on a suit. They are way too casual and are not appropriate. Always get the button suspenders. You can easily have a tailor when you buy the suit just add them on or have your local dry cleaner do it. Most suspenders you purchase will have a set of buttons included in the package.

Should you get Big and Tall suspenders or just regular ones? If you have a long torso, are tall, or very large belly then get the longer ones. Personally I am right in between. If I get the big and tall version the metal adjustment clips tend to be up at my shoulders whereas the regular ones are at down near my pants. I go with the regular ones but you may just have to try a few of them on and figure out which one works better for you. In general the metal clips really shouldn’t be much higher than your nipples or it starts to look awkward.

I would encourage you to pay attention to proportion of your body to the width of the suspenders. Really skinny suspenders less than an inch tend to look silly on bigger guys who are very broad.

Should you match your suspenders to your tie? I would say the answer is closer to how you approach a pocket square. The key is complementing the other colors you have one. If you are wearing a vest they aren’t visible so it won’t matter as much but if you aren’t you should be cautious. To start though I would recommend some basic solid suspenders (navy blue, red, yellow) that can be matched with many ties and still look great. Then as you purchase more over time you can start playing with the complementing colors and patterns. I’ve found a solid navy can look good with almost any color.

Where can you purchase suspenders?

You can find these online more often than in stores. Brooks Brothers does sell them in store as well as a few other high end retailers. While they have their own brands, Trafalgar is the big brand and usually costs $75 to $100. www.suspenderstore.com has decent ones and deals sometimes. In general and as with anything you can find suspenders on eBay and other sites cheaper. If you have other suggestions please leave them as a comment!