He wouldn’t look good in stripes.
A 400-pound felon — who claims he spent eight months in jail in one set of street clothes because the city wouldn’t find him fashion that fit — is hoping to tip the scales of justice with a $1 million federal lawsuit.
Elias A. Diaz, 55, says the Correction Department should pay up for forcing him to do his time in the T-shirt and sweats in which he was arrested.
Diaz claims he was humiliated by the improper jailhouse attire and will need “expensive” therapy to come to grips with the fashion faux pas.
The 5-foot-10 behemoth claims administrators at the Vernon C. Bain Center in The Bronx made no effort to get him out of his smelly, worn-out duds and into an official green jumpsuit after his sentencing.
The officials didn’t see “fit to stock any clothing beyond the size of 6X,” Diaz claims. Meanwhile, Diaz wears at least a 7X.
A brief stint at Rikers Island didn’t help; officers there just threatened to write him up for not having proper clothes, even though there is an on-site tailor at the prison.
“No one has issued me institutional clothing or made any attempted [sic] to measure me, to attempt to make the clothing, or borrow, purchase or anything else besides talk about getting me institutionally issued clothing,” Diaz wrote in court papers.
His friends tried to send clothes, but most of the packages were rejected or returned, Diaz claims in his lawsuit.
With only a spare T-shirt and shorts, he was forced to wash his clothes every day in the shower.
Diaz, a mechanic whose rap sheet dates to a 1975 attempted-robbery charge, was arrested in May after cops caught him with two guns.
Officers visited Diaz after a woman said he threatened her at gunpoint. Diaz said he was just trying to collect a debt from her boss and added, “I showed her a weapon . . . to let her boss know I meant business,” according to the criminal complaint.
Diaz, who filed his lawsuit himself but says he has since retained a lawyer, says the city failed to provide him “equal care and protection.” And he claims not getting big clothes in the big house has left him broken.
“I wake up still thinking I’m in jail and washing and washing and never feeling like I can wash enough,” Diaz told The Post outside his Bronx home last week.
“I never felt clean in there. And I cannot feel clean now no matter what I do.”
He wants $1 million in damages, which includes $500,000 to help him pay for psychiatric care he says he now needs.
The Correction Department declined to comment on the lawsuit but said Diaz filed a complaint about a housing issue during his jail term and could have done the same about clothing issues.
Additional reporting by Candice M. Giove