It’s difficult getting height addition really right on your own without a lot of trial and error. Adding inches and keeping it discreet, in comfort, gradually enough (but not too gradual!). I have been doing it 17 years since my late teens and am still learning. There are not many actual examples that are right out there, in full view, and the only time you become aware of elevators is when you see stars wearing appalling clumpy great boots with suits on a catwalk in an attempt to seem taller.  So I am going to tell you about a mate of mine who is really one of the very few people I actually personally KNOW and see regularly who adds height like I do. I have given loads of advice to guys online and anonymously – mainly because I read such rubbish about the subject and cannot resist commenting and offering my views, having done it successfully for so many years – but rarely do I meet anyone. I like to keep my secret safe and as the old saying goes – ‘once one person knows, everyone knows’. Unless I guess (hopefully) it is a secret you share in common over a long period.

Greg and I got to know each other when he worked in a business linked to mine and he used to go on all the time about how tall I was. He then was quite frank with me about wanting to appear taller and our friendship was such that I shared a few thoughts and in the end after quite a while told him that I too added height. He is a good bit shorter than me, at 5’9”, and his path to adding height has also been shorter! – he started 7 years ago. But his story is so useful and such a good example of how to do it right that I thought I would share it with you. When we met, I was wearing lifts all the time and had not yet got on to elevators. I didn’t realize it but he too was wearing lifts. It came about quite naturally that he commented on wanting to appear taller, he always bought and wore boots that added a bit of height, like Timberlands and Doc Martens. And he mentioned that he was in the habit of stacking insoles etc. “For comfort”! Having got the crap out of the way I talked frankly with him and he was totally amazed that I wore lifts – and a lot bigger of course by that stage than what he was wearing. He then bought himself some lifts, wore boots a little larger than his normal size to get more in and spent a few years adding height generally. His comment to me one day was revealing, at the stage he was comfortably adding a couple of inches: “You know this is weird but I SWEAR I thought my girlfriend would twig that I was adding height. She hasn’t, at all. I guess she has just got used to me at slightly different heights but for me those 2” extra are amazing”.  By now he had got used to adding a bit of height and had realized he could in fact take it further – but with lifts this really proves impossible to do in comfort. So after I myself bought my first pair of GuidoMaggi’s a couple of years ago, he watched on carefully and then bought the same as myself but an inch or so lower – the Ischias. Nicely made, beautifully made in fact, but very plain and practical and mainstream and quality. This meant he was adding about 3” of height now and getting used to it. As they went with practically everything he wore he got used to them and so started using the slightly higher lift supplied with them, giving him another half inch or so.

“Again I was amazed that no-one, just no-one, had really made any kinda observation that I was getting taller,” he told me. “I was really worried that it would be ‘Yikes. Look he has shot up’. None of that at all. My mates at work, my girlfriend, my family. I may have had the odd occasional comment along the lines of ‘you are taller than I thought’ but even that wasn’t probing or questioning – it was just a kinda statement of fact. And it wasn’t like ‘oh God you were tiny and now you are massive’. It was just the kinda thing you say when you see someone and comment, like as if they have been working out and then one day a bit of muscle shows in the t-shirt”. By this point, Greg was hitting 6’ quite easily and at this stage very very comfortable with the addition. He was adding incrementally, bit by bit and it was working – the ‘boiling frog’ principle (a nasty analogy but it is often used!). Throughout this, it seemed to me he was able to do it right (with a bit of guidance!), not crashing around in a pair of suddenly acquired max 5” boots having done nothing to prepare the world for the New Tall Greg! Certainly he did not have to do too much expensive and time wasting experimentation (that I had had to do over the years). Now Greg really wants to be as tall as absolutely possible but realized that the next stages had to be carefully worked out given his actual height. “I think I realized that wearing 5” elevators regularly at my height and in my lifestyle/situation was going to have to be carefully thought through, and in the end I decided no, I will stick to 4” absolute max day to day, but get some 5” elevators for really special – nights out, maybe situations where I will meet other tall guys socially like my girlfriend’s brother who is indeed 6’2”.

So that’s what he did in the end only a few months ago.  And it matters not at all that his height varies a little. Everyone’s does in different footwear. He is never less than an extra 3” which is around 6’ and hits higher on nights out. If ever there was an example of doing it right, gradually, and getting acclimatized to the changes, Greg’s is it. He has never felt odd or uncomfortable, never felt that people were looking and wondering anything at all. Every new slight advance was made easier from a comfort and walkable point of view. And most importantly really – the gradual way in which he did it means that his enhanced height feels real and natural.