| For reasons too tedious to relate here, I recently unpacked my
Number Two and Number Three leather bike jackets from the cardboard box they'd languished
in for over four years. Number Two, a dinky, plain black crew-neck item which I bought
from Lewis Leathers in Gt. Portland Street, London (which once again betrays my hideous
old age), was in fine fettle and still fitted me well enough. Number Three, a garish red
double-breasted garment with blue and white stripes had somehow provided several
breakfasts, lunches and suppers for a family of mice, which I suppose means that our
rodent friends at least have colourful appetites. Which is a pity because occasionally I
liked charging out into the fray looking garish, red and double-breasted, but in truth it
was a heavy old bugger, laden with quilted shoulder padding and not actually that comfy.
Jackets Nos. 1 and 2 however, are, and even though they're respectively 15 and 25 years
old, I see no reason to replace them with anything newer and snazzier. Same goes for a
pair of heavy but supple leather jeans in a fetching shade of dark blue, and the only full
set of leathers I've ever owned (and what's more, bought with my own money -a journalistic
rarity). This latter is a relatively sober black and grey Furygan zip-together two-piece
made to measure when I was about a stone lighter and these, I must admit, could do with a
discreetly inserted gusset in the waist area (and I do like a nice gusset). My box of bike clobber also yielded two pairs of pukka riding boots, respectively from AGV (yes, they used to make booties) and Alpinestars and apart from the gravel worn outer soles, badges of honour if you please, I can't see why they shouldn't continue to give good service for many years to come. Ditto the Barbour suit that had also seen some 15 years of off-road service before they were packed away in the late 'nineties, although the two-piece Rukka oversuit of similar vintage could now use a new zip and a damn good machine wash. This trawl through the Williams wardrobe, or at least that part of it I can admit to in a family magazine, serves to illustrate the point that a few well-chosen (or in some cases, blagged) items of properly maintained protective clothing should last the average biker a few decades provided, of course, he or she ain't piled on too many pounds, routinely travelled down the tarmac on their bums... or provided meals for mice. (A claim that probably isn't going to make me very popular with the retail trade, but since the days are long gone when I qualify for leatherwear freebies, I'm obliged to be realistic about my apparel). Of course you wouldn't know this by watching a horde of sportbikers lamming around the A-roads of a Sunday morning, most of whom appear to've ordered up a fresh set of colour-matched leathers every time they bought a new bike. And a helmet. And a set of boots. And a pair of gloves. Which adds anything between a grand and fifteen hundred quid to the cost of buying the bike in the first place. And despite the cost of stocking a full range of sizes and styles, and/or dealing with the vagaries of bespoke tailoring, dealers clearly regard this as some kind of retail grail. But I fear that if enough of today's smart young bikists start to question the need to indulge in new attire every time they buy a bike, then their jig may indeed be up. |
I mean apart from guaranteeing sniggers from anyone who's not a motorcyclist
whenever they dismount for a bacon sandwich/pint of Kaliber/toilet break, expensive,
multi-hued outerwear offers you little more than cheap, black outerwear. Indeed claims
that the latest titanium woven Kevlar (what ?) elbow pads or perforated armpit gussets
(hurrah !) will add years to your active life strike me as a bit hollow if chummy in a
38-tonne Scania decides to fall asleep at the wheel. It would also surely be irresponsible
to encourage people to ride beyond their limits in the dumb belief that their new,
top-of-the-range Rossi-replica leathers will let them cheat death. Remaining faithful to
the old Bell slogan 'If you've got a $50 head, buy a $50 dollar helmet', I do however,
hold that a high quality crash hat is worth shelling out for. But one can buy a suitably
accredited model in a plain colour (once again in my case, a black, eight-year-old
Shark... zzzzz) for considerably less than the latest race-inspired psychedelic wet-dream.
And also once again, if I hit a brick wall at 80mph, I don't think an Arai costing me
three times as much is really going to stop me becoming a vegetable. Or worse still, a
dead vegetable. Okay, it may well be that contrary to the misplaced, clothing-will-save-me philosophy I actually ride slightly slower than those of my brethren clad in £900-worth of hand-tooled Dainese frippery precisely to ensure that I don't get gravel rash on my ancient leather jeans, or chip my Shark on a kerbstone. So you might say that old, if not dreary motorcycle ciothing is no less safe than the latest day-glo spacesuit variety. If you've any doubts about that, you should meet my friend who's spending the rest of his life in a wheelchair after hitting a patch of diesel at just 20mph, wearing full leathers and a top-of-the-range Shoei. And I've (obviously) never forgotten, being reassured by a nice nurse in the casualty department of Hereford General, that a strong pair of jeans clad tightly across my nether regions offered almost as much protection in a sliding-down-the-road scenario as a pair of leather trews (And since I was Iying there in pair of saucy black Wranglers with a badly-mangled knee at the time, I had even less reason to doubt her winsome authority). All of which flimsily supports my contention, nay belief, that a black leather jacket, a silk scarf, a pair of jeans and a sexy pair of well made ankle-boots (Stephan Killian's will do nicely, since you ask) are almost as safe, far cheaper and, most important of all, considerably more stylish than any of the expensive gee-gaws that assail my eyeballs whenever I drop into a bike dealers. After all, when it comes to biker iconography, which image will still be with us, and selling motorcycling to the great unwashed (especially the great female unwashed) in 20 or 30 years' time: Marlon Brando sneering laconically in The Wild One, or some brightly painted mobile billboard zipping past anonymously behind a smoked visor? Marlon epitomised danger just standing still besides his dusty old Triumph, and no-one's going to convince me that motorcycling isn't appealingly, thrillingly dangerous - that's one of the main reasons why we do it. So if you want to lower the odds of damaging yourself seriously you might as well take up golf... Mind you, how daft will you look in a multi-coloured Pringle sweater, windowpane-check kecks and a pair of two-tone shoes with spikes in their soles? |