Large Golfers Need Style Too

Aveo Sportswear caters to the hard-to-fit plus-sized player.

Tony Dear

I ask this with the greatest respect in the world, but…is your body unconventionally sized?

Do you have trouble finding clothes that fit right?

I’m tall and slim – no, not Adrien Brody or Andrew Garfield tall and slim…more Stephen Merchant. Weirdly lanky is probably a better description, and finding trousers that fit can be a real pain. So I need to special-order stuff if I’m ever going to walk the fairways with pants that actually end beneath my ankles, and don’t need three extra punched holes in my belt to stay up.

Last week, I played with a guy who likewise has to special order clothes because even Walmart, which can be pretty generous with its waist sizes, didn’t have anything he liked. He was very tall and very big—probably 6'5'' and 320-330 lbs.

And he won’t mind me saying that he didn’t exactly look like the dapper gentleman golfer.

His ill-fitting and rather unflattering garments were clearly manufactured by a company that didn’t get much call for XXXL shirts and 40/36 trousers. His billowing windbreakers and voluminous cargo shorts suggested John Daly circa 1995 Open Championship. Not good.

So I told him about Aveo, a Rogers, Arkansas-based menswear company that makes golf threads for bigger, taller, and yes, unconventionally sized, men.

The company, founded by Darius Hicks (above) and Randy Peaches, is nearly four years old and got its beginning when Hicks (6’4''/300lbs) grew so tired of wearing uncomfortable and unsightly shorts on the course he had a friend make some for him. People in Hicks’s group took notice. He soon went into production.

Aveo began by offering two styles of shorts and two styles of trousers with 38”-44” waistbands and 32”/34” inseams. It was a modest start, but the products gained a good deal of attention, so Hicks and Peaches began offering more styles (pleated and flat-front), sizes and colors. Today there are eight styles of shorts, six trousers and three shirts.

Every pair of Aveo pants or shorts has what the company calls a ‘comfort flex waistband’, which provides more than 2″ of give. “You literally can grow with Aveo,” says Hicks.

A ladies’ fashion house might regard the designs and color options as terribly basic, and turn its nose up at such plain clothing, but Aveo’s apparel does for big and tall golfers what no clothing company has ever done—allow unconventionally-sized golfers to take pride in the way they look.

“Everyone wants to wear nice, stylish clothes that look good on them,” says Hicks. “We’re just trying to let big and tall men look every bit as stylish as others.”

And, according to one prominent women’s fashion publication, big and tall men will soon have a new, more marketable term to describe the plus-sized men’s category. Men of a certain frame, you will no longer be over-sized, outsized, overweight, double extra-large, maxi, or jumbo.

You’ll be “brawn.”

aveogolf.com

RELATED LINKS:

Get 'em While They Last: Titleist's Limited Edition T64 Vokey Wedge

The Top 10 Golf Products of the Year

Wishon Golf Launches Same-Length Irons

2016 Gear Guide: Shoes

Colorado AvidGolfer is the state’s leading resource for golf and the lifestyle that surrounds it. It publishes eight issues annually and proudly delivers daily content via www.coloradoavidgolfer.com.