The Best Underwear for Big and Tall Men
The best underwear for big and tall men: why waistbands roll, why sizing up rarely fixes the rise, and which brands grade width and length separately.
Slip: Why European Briefs Fit Differently
European briefs sizing explained: what a Swiss, German or Italian slip changes in the rise, side seam and front panel, and how to buy without guessing.
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Buy a brief in Manchester and a slip in Milan in what both labels claim is the same size, and you will own two noticeably different garments. The Italian one will sit lower, cut deeper at the side, and hold you closer at the front. The English one will be roomier through the seat and higher at the hip. Neither is wrong. They were drawn by people working from different assumptions about what the garment is for, and nobody ever bothered to tell the customer.
This is the article that explains those assumptions, because once you can see them, the whole category stops being a lottery. You will know why a Schiesser in your usual size feels like armour and a Hom in your usual size feels like nothing, and you will know which one you actually want.
The word is doing more work than you think
Start with vocabulary, because the vocabulary is the tell.
In French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and Portuguese, the everyday word for the garment is slip. It carries no charge at all. A French father buys slips, a French teenager buys slips, the word appears on supermarket packaging next to the milk. There is no snigger in it and no defensiveness around it, which is precisely why southern European men kept buying them through the decades when the English-speaking world was busy being embarrassed Where the World Wears Briefs: An Atlas.
English never landed on a neutral word. We have "brief", which is clinical and sounds like paperwork, and we have a schoolyard insult that this site declines to print. A language that has no comfortable way to name a thing tends to end up with a population that has no comfortable way to buy it, and the market responds by hiding the product at the back of the shop.
That is not just a cultural observation. It has consequences on the pattern table. A garment that is normal gets designed for performance. A garment that is embarrassing gets designed to be inoffensive, which in practice means bigger, plainer and safer. Half of what follows comes back to that.
Three schools of cutting
Broadly, and with all the usual exceptions, there are three traditions.
The Swiss and German school treats underwear as engineering. The reference points are Zimmerli, Hanro and Schiesser, all of them companies with more than a century of knitting behind them and a mild obsession with the fabric itself. Cuts are generous rather than tight, waistbands are wide and soft, the seat is fully covered, and the fabric usually carries the argument. A German slip is not trying to flatter you. It is trying to still be the same shape in 2036. If you have ever wondered why a Swiss pair costs what it costs, the answer is nearly always in the knit rather than the pattern Five Briefs Worth the Money.
The French and Italian school treats underwear as clothing. Hom, Eminence, Le Slip Français, Dolce and the Italian mills think about the line under a trouser, the drop of the side seam, and how the garment reads when it is the only thing you are wearing in a hotel room. Rises are lower, sides are cut deeper, the front is shaped rather than gathered, and colour is used without apology. A French slip assumes it will be seen and does not consider that a problem.
The Anglo-American school treats underwear as a consumable. Multipacks, cotton jersey, a mid rise, a full seat, a modest side, and a price point that assumes you will replace the lot in a year. There is nothing shameful in this and some of it is excellent value, but the design brief is different: cover reliably, offend nobody, cost little. The natural output of that brief is a garment nobody has strong feelings about.
None of the three is a hierarchy. If you want to disappear under a suit, borrow from the French. If you want a pair that outlives the suit, borrow from the Swiss. If you want twelve pairs for the gym bag, the Anglo-American multipack is doing exactly the job it was drawn for.
What actually changes, panel by panel
The differences are specific and you can see all of them on a table in about a minute.
The rise. European slips generally sit lower on the hip, often two to four centimetres lower than a comparable British or American brief. That reads as more modern and works better under low and mid rise trousers, which is most trousers now. It works badly with a genuine high waisted trouser, where a lower rise leaves an awkward gap of shirt between waistband and waistband.
The side seam depth. This is the single most visible difference and the one men react to hardest. An American classic brief typically has a side of five to seven centimetres. A continental slip is often two to four, and an Italian one can be less. A deeper side means more coverage on the hip and a more conservative look. A shallow side means more leg, a cleaner line under trousers, and the impression that the garment is doing less even though it is doing the same amount Brief, Slip, Tanga, Jock: A Field Guide to Supportive Underwear.
The front construction. This is the real engineering difference and it is where money shows. A cheap brief has a flat front with the shaping done by stretch alone, which is to say it has no shaping at all and relies on the fabric to work it out. A properly drawn slip has a contoured front built from separate panels, sometimes with a horizontal or vertical seam, and it holds a shape rather than finding one. The continental brands have been doing this longer and doing it better, and it is most of the reason a good slip feels supportive rather than merely tight Anatomy of a Brief: Every Panel, Seam and Stitch Explained.
The waistband. German brands favour a wide, soft, covered band. Italian brands favour a narrower band, often branded, often exposed. The wide band spreads load and does not dig in, which matters more the longer the day. The narrow band looks better and gives up sooner. This is a real trade and you should decide which side of it you are on before you buy six of anything.
The leg opening. Continental slips more often use a bound or flatlocked edge rather than a folded and stitched hem, which lies flatter under a trouser and is far less likely to rope after washing.
The gusset. Better European makers put a separate gusset panel in the base of the front rather than running the side panels into each other. It costs an extra piece and an extra seam, and it is the difference between a garment that follows you and one that pulls when you sit down.
The sizing problem, solved
Here is where most first purchases go wrong, and it is a genuinely solvable problem.
Continental brands frequently use numeric sizing rather than letters, and the numbers are not intuitive to anyone who did not grow up with them. Schiesser's own published chart is a fair anchor for the German convention: size 4 corresponds to small and a waist of about 78 centimetres, 5 to medium at about 83, 6 to large at about 88, 7 to extra large at about 93, and 8 to double extra large at about 98. The pattern is roughly five centimetres of waist per step, which is a useful thing to hold in your head when a site gives you a number and no explanation.
Italian brands more often run 2 to 6, where 3 tends to be small, 4 medium and 5 large. French brands are split between numbers and letters and are the least consistent of the three.
Three rules make all of this manageable.
Measure, once, properly. Put a tape around your hips where the waistband will actually sit, which is on the hip bone and lower than where you measure for trousers. Write the number down in centimetres. Every European size chart is in centimetres, and converting from a trouser size you half remember is how people end up a size out How a Brief Should Actually Fit.
Use the brand's chart and only the brand's chart. There is no European standard here. The numbers are conventions rather than regulations, and two German brands can differ by a full size at the same printed number.
Expect continental sizing to run slightly smaller than the letter you are used to, mostly because American letter sizing has drifted upward over the years and European numeric sizing has not. If you are genuinely between sizes, size up in anything with a low elastane content and stay true in anything with five percent or more.
Buying from a European brand without regretting it
A few practical things, learned expensively.
Underwear is very often excluded from returns on hygiene grounds, which means the usual strategy of ordering two sizes and sending one back is not available to you. If the brand turns up in a shop anywhere near you, a minute with the garment in your hands settles more than an afternoon of chart reading How to Buy Briefs in a Shop Without Dying of Embarrassment. Buy one pair. Wear it. Then buy the six.
Check the fabric weight if the site publishes it. Continental brands sometimes do, in grams per square metre, and it tells you more than any photograph. Anything under about 140 is summer weight and will be light and slightly sheer. Around 160 to 180 is the everyday sweet spot. Above 200 you are into the heavy Swiss interlocks, which are superb and are not what you want in August The Fabric Bible: What Your Briefs Are Actually Made Of.
For readers in the UK, orders from EU sites can attract duty and handling fees on arrival, which occasionally doubles the effective price of a cheap order and is much less painful on an expensive one. It is another argument for buying one good pair rather than four mediocre ones.
Watch for the word tanga on a European site, which means something specific and is not the same garment as a slip. If you have arrived there deliberately, good, and there is a whole article about why The Tanga: Europe's Best-Kept Secret. If you have arrived there by accident, you will find out on the doorstep.
The brands worth knowing, by country
Switzerland gives you Zimmerli, which is the most expensive underwear made anywhere and is genuinely, provably better knitted than almost everything else, and Hanro, which is nearly as good and slightly more wearable in price Zimmerli brief.
Germany gives you Schiesser, which has been going since 1875 and whose fine rib brief is one of the great value garments in this whole category, plus Olaf Benz and Bruno Banani at the more design led end Schiesser fine rib brief.
France gives you Hom, which effectively invented the modern men's slip market in the 1960s, Eminence for the everyday, and Le Slip Français for the ones made in France with a straight face and a sense of humour at the same time Le Slip Français brief.
Italy gives you the mills more than the labels, which is why so many other people's underwear is knitted there, and a general national conviction that a slip should look like something.
Spain and Portugal are quietly excellent and consistently under-priced, and if you find a Portuguese made cotton slip at a sensible price you have found the best value in the category.
What you actually take from this
The useful conclusion is not that European briefs are better. It is that the differences are deliberate, legible and easy to shop for once you know the vocabulary.
If your complaint about briefs has ever been that they feel like a school uniform, you have probably only ever worn the Anglo-American cut, and the fix is a lower rise with a shallower side. If your complaint is that they do not last, you want the German or Swiss end and you want to look at the fabric weight rather than the price. If your complaint is that they show under trousers, you want a bound leg opening and a contoured front, and you want to stop buying anything with a folded hem.
That is three real problems with three real solutions, none of which involves changing style. Which is generally how it goes: most men who think they dislike briefs dislike one specific brief that was drawn for somebody else.
None of which is helped by the fact that the letter on the label is not anchored to anything. European sizing does not agree with British sizing, and neither agrees with American, so a man buying across borders is really buying blind unless he works from the stated measurements Vanity Sizing: Why You Are a Different Size in Every Shop.
Questions people ask
What is the difference between a slip and a brief?
Nothing, at the level of the dictionary. Slip is simply the French, German, Italian, Spanish and Dutch word for a brief. In practice, English speakers use "slip" to mean the continental cut specifically, which sits lower on the hip, is cut shallower at the side and is usually shaped at the front rather than flat. If a shop is selling you a "slip" rather than a "brief", expect a bit less coverage and a bit more design.
What size European brief should I buy?
Measure your hips where the waistband will sit, in centimetres, and read the brand's own chart. As a rough anchor for German numeric sizing, 4 is small at around 78 centimetres, 5 is medium at around 83, 6 is large at around 88 and 7 is extra large at around 93. Italian brands usually run 2 to 6 with 4 as medium. Do not convert from your trouser size, and do not assume two brands using the same number mean the same thing.
Are European briefs smaller than British or American ones?
Usually slightly, yes, though the meaningful difference is shape rather than volume. A continental slip is cut lower at the hip and shallower at the side, so it looks considerably smaller on a hanger while covering the parts that matter just as well. American letter sizing has also drifted larger over the decades, so a European medium and an American medium are no longer the same garment.
Is it worth paying for Swiss or German underwear?
If you keep clothes, yes, and the maths is easy to run. A Swiss brief at five times the price of a supermarket pair that lasts eight years rather than one is cheaper per wear and considerably nicer for every day of it. If you replace your underwear on a whim every spring, the premium is buying you comfort rather than economy, which is a fair thing to buy but a different one Buy It Once: The Durability Guide to Briefs That Last Years.