IMAGES BY NICK EDARDS
Those of us who’ve done the cold hard miles as the fangs of winter tear at our inner warmth, know the value of good thermal gear.
And there is a lot of good thermal gear out there. I know this, because I own most of it. But, hand on my heart, there is nothing (and I mean it) out there as good as the Held 3D Skin.
Yes, you will now tell me you have merino wool-flavoured thermals, and silk-impregnated thermals, and possibly cashmere-lined, angora-pumped thermals mixed with the fluff of the arctic alpaca. I have some of those, too. And they’re good.
But they are not great. The Held 3D Skin is, capital G Great.
I know this because this is now my second winter with it keeping my core warm…and making me feel a bit like a superhero thanks to its mainly-black-with-a-bit-of-sexy-red colour scheme.
Most thermal gear is all Wakanda Forever black, and that’s fine. But the 3D Skin has its own warm-sexy going on.
Here is what is so special about it…
The gear is made from NILIT HEAT high-performance fibre, which offers unmatched insulation by maintaining the body’s natural temperature. This fibre is odour-reducing because it has built-in coffee-activated charcoal (I shit thee not), and completely breathable. It is also seamless, and that’s priceless when you’re wearing skin-tight stuff under bike gear.
Held even makes them for less bear-sized men.The neck is high, but not annoyingly so, and it’s long, so it won’t ride up if you’re in a racer’s crouch. And it feels amazing when you put it on. It is appreciably thicker than any other bit of thermal gear I have – which is certainly why it’s so effective. This seems to be the apex of materials technology at this moment, and I’m so glad it is.
You don’t realise how good this gear is until you realise, quite suddenly, how good it is. I had that moment last year, running around the Snowies with temperatures in low single digits, and all I had on was this 3D Skin, a long-sleeved T-shirt, my Held Softshell Vest (Another totally indispensable bit of winter gear which I reviewed HERE) and a jacket.
I was, somehow, not cold. The world was cold, my face was cold, my gloves were working overtime, and I was certainly looking forward to getting to where I needed to be, but I was not remotely cold.
Years ago, I would have been on the verge of death. Years before that, I would have already died. But, like I said, materials technology has come along in leaps and bounds, and we reap those benefits all the time.
The reason I’m not treating you to a picture of me in these is that I do not have a pair of the pants. But I shall get a pair soon, and if you like and you’re wrong like that, I can provide images of me wearing them.Gone are the days when we went to Woolies and bought those white knitted longjohns and undershirts, and pretended they worked, while we cursed ourselves for not bringing an extra woollen jumper, because they didn’t really work all that much at all.
But there is a downside. There always is.
Did Held really need to emblazon the words “FUNCTIONAL UNDERWEAR” on the bastard? When I think of “functional underwear”, I think of jocks and wife-beater singlets. And stripper G-strings with sparkles on them – hugely functional units, those. There are heaps of better words Held might have used to describe this amazing bit of gear. It might have even used the German word for under wear which is “Unterwäsche”, but even that’s not really banging, is it?
Next time I go to visit the factory, I will suggest the following to the lads…
Heiße Haut (Hot Skin)
Sex Panther Fell (Sex Panther Fur)
Heißes Powerfell (Hot Power Pelt)
HOW MUCH? $130
WHERE CAN I GET IT? CLICK ON THIS
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