all woman tights plus size

Received 24 February 2012
Dianne

My new pantyhose (tights) arrived today and just in time, indeed! I went to the hospital for x-rays today and had to wear bulky socks and walking shoes to cover up the fact that I no longer had any feet in the pair I was wearing. When I got home, my husband and daughter were standing at the door with big grins like cats that swallowed the bird. My husband held up the package and my 12 yr-old daughter started screaming, "Try them on! Try them on!" I could barely get enough privacy to put on a pair. They fit and feel so-o-o-o-o good...like silk. Isn't it amazing that a woman in a city of 40,000 in Canada has to purchase Italian-made pantyhose from a company in the UK because there's none here? You are a true angel - an absolute godsend. I'm so glad that I found you.

With sincerest wishes for a happy day.
Kate

Received 20th February 2012

Hello!

Thank you so much for these tights! Over the many years I have been
wearing tights I have never come across a pair that are so
comfortable, it's amazing :) They stretch in all the right places and
are a perfect length to sit comfortably on the waist. I would love
love love these to come in thicker denier so they are warmer in the
colder weather. Overall I think these are one of the best pair of
tights I have ever owned & I cannot wait to buy more :)

Thank you so much

Cathrine

All Woman tights fit tall women, women with plus size hips and women with big thighs - read why they work

When we started The Big Bloomers Company back in 2007 we had no intention of manufacturing. All we ever intended was to supply plus size lingerie – we were to be a link in the chain - the middle man.

A big surprise awaited us. Whilst loads of wholesalers and retailers were boasting that they made/supplied plus size lingerie up to size 6XL (UK dress size 28/30) this was not, in fact, the case. It was a puff, a brag, an empty promise leaving plus size women frustrated and disappointed after endless fruitless internet searches.

We made a pledge that if we couldn’t supply the item in 6XL we wouldn’t have it on the Big Bloomers website. Having stood on this high moral ground, we realised that the only way to keep to the promise was to manufacture these elusive plus size and 6LX items ourselves.

As far as manufacturing the knickers was concerned everything went relatively smoothly…… but the tights were in another league. Talk about a learning curve, ladies you have no idea!

We soon learned from our customers that nobody, but nobody, was manufacturing tights that were either long enough or had enough room in the thighs. Stories of women having to wear an extra pair of knickers over their tights to keep them from riding down as they walked were common place. Tights where the thighs were grabbing and making use of the gusset fabric because the thighs weren’t big enough were also common. We were appalled to learn that our customers were suffering such discomfort day in day out, and we were naïve enough to promise them a quick solution to their problems. We approached our pantyhose wholesaler and asked him to talk to his manufacturer about making tights with wider hips and bigger thighs. There seemed to be problems with this request and eventually, we were put in touch with the manufacturer to talk through our requirements. After a few not overly enthusiastic discussions it was agreed that a prototype should be produced. We were very excited – until the sample pairs of ‘extra plus size’ tights arrived at the warehouse. The manufacturer had simply widened the gusset to something like ten inches back and front and continued this fabric right up to the waist thus making the tights about 20 inches wider from waist to hips and incredibly bulky round the crotch. We sent them to our guinea pigs whose feed back was not much more than tepid, the only agreement between them all was that these tights were slightly better than anything else on the market.

My daughter Laura decided that there was only one way forward, to go to Italy, the home of lingerie manufacturing and talk to the big manufacturers. She would explain how the ‘extra plus size’ design fell short of what was required and get a solution to the problem once and for all. So, in April 2009 armed with her English/Italian dictionary, Laura set off to spend three months in the north of Italy talking to pantyhose manufacturers.

It was a soul destroying three months. Her Italian wasn’t up to persuading receptionists to allow her to speak to the decision makers within the companies. She did manage to learn that the problem was the barrel on which the tights are knitted. All manufacturers use a standard sized barrel and that dictates the amount of stretch in the thighs. ‘You can’t have tights bigger than the barrel’ they told Laura. ‘What about getting a bigger barrel?’ Laura suggested. ‘Nobody has bigger barrel. Nobody want tights knitted on bigger barrel’ they explained in English which although ‘broken’ was still better than Laura’s Italian. They shook their heads and threw their hands into the air, ‘There is no bigger barrel.’ Dead end!
Making them longer was not a technical problem….. but it WAS a problem because Italian men, not being overly tall could see no point in making their tights any longer. ‘Why you want these tights longer, they long enough, they fit ME’ they grinned, one after the other.
Eventually, Laura had some unbelievable luck from which all of you plus size ladies are now able to reap the benefit. She was driving back to Parma after a particularly unproductive day when she stopped to take a mobile call. As she spoke, she noticed that she was parked outside a small lingerie factory. The facia looked in need of a lick of paint as did the office door. Laura rang the bell. The door was opened by a tall, plus size, forty-something Italian woman. It turned out that the factory had recently been left to Francesca by her grandfather and she was feeling quite overwhelmed with the thought of how she was to modernise it. Laura recognised her opportunity and grabbed it. Francesca’s ample thighs and heavy hips meant that she was aware of the problem with tights and hardly ever wore them, she was, however, polite enough to listen to Laura’s theory that a bigger barrel was needed, NOT extra width in the gusset. Together they worked out how big this barrel needed to be and what size minimum order would make it worthwhile for Francesca to go to the expense of buying it.

That was all nearly three years ago…….. that’s how long it has taken! But now we have the All Woman tights – 25,000 packs stacked up in the warehouse and they are exactly to the specification Laura knew she needed when she left England in April 2009. They are long in the leg - they wont ride down and you won’t need to wear an extra pair of knickers to keep them up. In fact, the All Woman tights fit the Shrewsbury Town Crier and he’s 7ft 2” tall and wears a size 17 shoe. They are wide on the hips, stretching to 100 inches if you needed them to! And, this is going to please so many of you, the large circumference of Francesca’s barrel means that they will accommodate very big thighs without grabbing at the gusset fabric. We have two sizes, Uk 22/32 and UK 34/44 – and whether you’re tall and big boned or short and plus size, one of those two sizes will fit you….. that’s a promise and just in case you still don’t believe us, you can buy a sample pair for £1 to make sure.