HELD WOODLAND ARMALITH JACKET REVIEW – WILL WONDERS NEVER CEASE?

IMAGES BY NICK ‘IT’S A VOGUE COVER’ EDARDS

Now and again, I come across something truly wondrous. I kinda scratch my head and try to comprehend it, and largely fail. The science, cos that is what it is, is beyond me, for I am a simple man.

This is what happened when Ray from Held gave me this piece of gear. Yes, I know it says “jacket”, but it’s actually a cross between a shirt and jacket. So it may be a shirket. Or a jackirt. But Held can’t call it that because no-one would understand what it is. So, let us go along with the jacket thing, OK?

Just as background, a few years back, a flood of these shirty-looking jackets appeared on the market. They offered some vague protection through the armour they carried, but none of them approached a proper textile or leather jacket in terms of abrasion and tear resistance.

Their big selling point was comfort.

Held, being Held, considered all of this and decided that it too was going to make such a garment, but Held being Held, decided its garment would offer protection the equivalent of a textile or leather jacket, while still offering the comfort of stretch denim.

Was this even possible? No. Not until the advent of a material called Armalith. And Armalith is a sorcerous blending of heavy denim and something called Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyethylene, or UHMWP. And if you Google that, you will be amazed, as was I.

This is some seriously amazing material. I’m not about to break down the science for you, because there are very few of us, myself included, with the learnin’ needed to understand the cool properties of something with a molecular mass between 3.5 million and 7.5 million amu. And you won’t really care at all about its relationship to polyolefin, how it deals with Van Der Waals forces, or stuff about aromatic stacking interactions.

But what you might like to know is that UHMWPE is has extremely low moisture absorption and a very low coefficient of friction. Even more importantly, it is highly resistant to abrasion, and in some forms is 15 times more resistant to abrasion than carbon steel. Its coefficient of friction is significantly lower than that of nylon and is comparable to that of Teflon, but UHMWPE has better abrasion resistance than Teflon.

So, when it is combined with the very best and heaviest denim, you have what can be deemed, by simple people, as a pretty incredible piece of protective motorcycle gear that feels like a high-quality denim shirt to wear.

And it also comes with this new Level 1 D30 Ghost Armour on the elbows and shoulders (and you can buy a similar back protector), which is hands down the softest and thinnest armour yet made. You don’t even feel it’s in there.

The result, as I discovered, is a garment that is amazingly windproof, has abrasion resistance that’s through the roof, and is so comfortable you can actually sleep in it. It did my head in a bit.

This is the cutting edge of materials science today, bitches. And it freaks me out some. It’s just so…so…well, bizarre, I guess. It feels like nothing when you’re wearing it. How can something like that, offer as much protection as it does?

No, I have not crashed in it. No-one pays me enough money for that shit, but I almost feel like I should to prove a point.

It is hands down better in those terms than any of the other motorcycle-specific trendo shirts I have tried, and while it does come in sexy lumberjack red, I really dig the black and grey variant. I actually wear it out, even when I am not riding. Makes me feel a bit like Puerto Rican gangster, ese. Viva la rasa, homes.

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Cos it’s jacket, it comes with a zip and buttons that do up the front. Cos it’s also a shirt, it only has two breast pockets, but it does have an inner document pocket.

Now I gotta tell you, it ain’t cheap. Top-notch sorcery never is. But as you know, the best hookers are always the most expensive. For a reason. We’re all grown-ups. I don’t need to go into details about why that is. We all know.

Here’s what else I know. I know this is a Held product, so that means it’s top-shelf in materials, and construction. It will last and last, just like all the other Held gear I have and have had for the last seven years. I just don’t need any new gear at the moment, because the Held stuff I have remains as good as the day I first got it. I have no reason to think this jacket won’t be the same. But there’s a two-year warranty on it, just in case.

Personally, I’ve never been a fan of gear that needs replacing every year or two. But I am a fan of this entirely amazing jacket. Or shirket. Or jackirt. Because science, bitches!

HOW MUCH? $599 – and yes, you can pay it off if you like. And it comes in sizes up to 6XL.

CLICK HERE IF YOU MUST HAVE ONE