anyone use this? i’ve just had a wonderfull chat with an old boy who was sporting a nice ventile jacket/shirt hybrid thingy. it had a full zip but then had button cuffs that you could roll back? plus two back pockets.

i’ve been intersted in this fabric for a while now.

Expensive, heavy, particularly when it gets wet, needs to be double layer for waterproofing, single layer for windproofing. I think of it as a sort of natural soft shell. It feels reassuringly sort of retro though and is very quiet in use and pretty breathable.

It works, in waterproofing terms, by swelling up when the fibres get wet and soaked, hence the weight increase.

Personally I’d not bother – you also need to bear in mind that although cotton is a natural fabric, quite often the production process isn’t particularly ecologically friendly.

But all that aside, it has a certain esoteric charm of its own 🙂

Consider Paramo, as a modern alternative.

^ Paramo beats it hands down.

I had a klattermusen (sp?) ventile windproof at one point, it was infinitely better than my new paramo equivalent. It was about £350 though which is why I now have the paramo.

Just a much nicer feel generally – I lived in it for days at a time when camping etc.

What Badly Wired Dog said. Modern waterproof materials are waaaay better (in terms of hydrostatic head measurement, which is a good way of comparing them) stuff like Event, and Goretex.

Not to say it’s not a nice fabric, you can make nice stuff from it (made some bags and a belt from it a while back), but there are better things out there for biking in.