To Londoners, Rapha needs no introduction. Increasingly that's the case in other cycling meccas from Melbourne to Portland. I personally inspected Rapha's clothing range in River City Cycles, Portland, Oregon, just last week. The only brand that seems to come close for attention to detail and, ahem, pricing, is San Francisco-based Mission Workshop, who focus on clothing and bags.Rapha is streets ahead of Mission Workshop and has a much larger global brand presence.
It helps that Rapha now appear prominently on Team Sky's kit, because it enforces the sense that no detail is too small to ignore. I know this from experience because Rapha recently mended the shoulder of my five-year-old soft shell jacket, for free (for goodness sakes!). I can't think of any luxury brand anywhere that would honour product back-up for wear and tear so long after purchase. Raise a glass to Rapha and stop quibbling about price. You always, always, get what you pay for and double that for cycling apparel.
But putting one over on gigantic Adidas to win the Sky deal in 2012 doesn't mean that Rapha gets everything right first time, however.
I think these trousers fall into that category.
They are described as 'stylish city riding trousers with clever functionality.' The functionality is beyond dispute. In particular, I noted the durable weight that hit the mat when they arrived in the mail. They exude high quality. The Schoeller fabric is a classic, while the all-important Cordura seat panel will, I predict, outlast conventional cotton chinos by three or four times.
Laura Bowers, who masterminds the UK marketing arm of Rapha, explained to me at length how a cotton fibre unravels under pressure of riding and eventually disintegrates, while Cordura is all but indestructable. She is right. A really thick, £99 pair of Brooks Brothers chinos suddenly developed wear holes on top of my sit bones after less thna one year's commuting. That was a real shock.
Other details such as the one belt loop in a different colour, and hi-viz lining when you roll up a leg, are nice touches.
But my beef with these trousers is that the cut is wrong for the mostly professional, middle class audience who would consider spinning £150 on a pair of commuting trousers. The seat is perfection, but the waist gapes a bit at the back as you ride and sits very low, hipster style, making the gripper band seem superflous. Worse, the leg is cut very slim, so much so that it felt as if I'd returned to high school 'drain-pipe' jeans. Particularly around my thighs, which fully fill the leg to bursting.
I was down in London today and there were a bunch of twenty-something dudes shooting a film. Thin trousers, bare ankles, converse sneakers and plaid shirts. Rapha's city trousers are part of that look, but they are not part of a sensible wardrobe that I would ride to work in and then wear all day behind a desk.
Funny thing is, last Monday I visited the Rapha Cycle Club in the Cow Hollow district of San Francisco, and someone there said that Rapha would be introducing a 'sprinter's cut' version later this year, with a wider leg.
I hope so - but please note here that you don't need to be Sir Chris Hoy to need the more generous cut.
I also notice that Rapha has recently reduced all sizes and colours of this product (beige and navy) to £100 from £150, (www.rapha.cc), suggesting that on this occasion they did get the pricing a bit wrong. It's certainly steep when, as I mentioned earlier, you can buy a luxuriously thick pair of Brooks Brothers chinos for £99.
But the other comparison I'd use is more telling still. There's another UK brand called Rohan, who years ago started applying synthetic tech to conventional jeans, with a travel/adventure/expedition audience in mind. In recent years they've moved into the 'chinos' market, and I've recently been sampling a pair. While not aimed at cyclists, the cut is much better than Rapha's and Rapha could do worse than to buy a pair and copy them.
In summary, these are potentially great trousers that aren't quite there yet, except for a niche audience of whippety thin Shoreditchers. A couple more colours wouldn't hurt either - the beige is very pale and will pick up chain oil stains faster than a backstreet mechanic. Oh, and keep the price below £100, because the Rohans I mentioned cost £57 (reduced to £37 in a sale...).
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