The Dapper Alchemist

I spent this past weekend in a surprisingly wet Chicago, damn you hurricane Ike. I was luckily spared the brunt of the torrential downpour thanks to my recently purchased Mackintosh (Mac), but I’ll be posting on that later in the week. The resiliency of the Mac got me thinking about how technology has improved fabric and in turn, changed how we interact with our clothing. So I’m dedicating this week’s articles to technical fabrics.

Today’s post focuses on OUTLIER, an outfit who is creating tailored clothing that can withstand the rigors of bicycle commuting. The folks at OUTLIER have summed up their aim quite well:

OUTLIER is about classically tailored garments made with the best technical fabrics around. Clothing that looks great no matter where you are in the day, riding to work, meeting with clients, or out on the town.

Their clothing uses technical fabrics that incorporate 3XDRY and Nanosphere technologies sourced from Schoeller. 3XDRY is a proprietary textile treatment process that functionalizes both synthetic and natural fabrics to repel water and absorb moisture. This combination prevents noticeable perspiration marks and improves dirt and water repellence. Furthermore wearers of 3XDRY-functionalized fabrics are kept drier over longer periods; this is an important consideration when designing clothes that need to look good after physical exertion.

Nanosphere technology focuses on making fabrics resistant to everything short of bullets. Schoeller, taking cues from the self-cleaning effect present in the leaves of certain plants, developed Nanosphere as a method of endowing fabrics with water resistance, self-cleaning properties and enhanced abrasion resistance. This process also meets bluesign standards, which means that it’s eco-friendly. It seems that OUTLIER has selected the perfect fabric for bike riders.

The toughness of OUTLIER’s clothing is attested by a harrowing experience during their testing phase:

The bike was destroyed, the knees battered and bleeding, yet the pants were just fine and that was exactly the quality of construction we knew we needed.

OUTLIER is releasing their technical trousers in October for $240, that’s a reasonable price for these amazing pants. For those of you looking to pre-order, e-mail them at OUTLIER at OUTLIER dot CC and you’ll get a discount of sixty bucks. I can only hope that the release of these trousers will spur better bike riding fashion that’ll give Milan or Copenhagen a run for it’s money, and will hopefully be captured by The Sartorialist.