As the seasons change this time of year, the Cyclingnews team's respective inboxes are often inundated by various brands’ latest autumn/winter (or fall/winter for those of you across the pond) collections. Very often it’s just fresh colourways, which in recent years have homogenised slightly into a sea of lovely muted tones befitting of the season… where did all that neon go from 2014, eh?
Now, before I get into this brief showcase, I’d like to say that, in general, I love Assos gear, and in particular, its winter kit. They are wordily named, but the Equipe R Habu and Johdah winter jackets are the best I’ve ever tested, and the Equipe R Spring Fall LS Jersey S11 is sensational.
With this in mind, I opened up Assos’ latest collection for the upcoming cold and gloom with some excitement, only to be met with perhaps one of the more bizarre features I’ve seen this year: a sunglasses storage loop on the upper right arm.
I’ve spent ages testing the best cycling glasses on the market, both in high summer and in the grizzly dark months where clear lenses are a must. It’s true that not all of them sit nicely in helmet vents, but there is a hierarchy of places you can put them as an alternative, starting with on the back of your head, then with the arms folded over down the back of your jersey (my preference at all times, as it happens).
I’m yet to find a pair of cycling glasses that can’t be stowed in one of these three ways, so to see a solid loop stitched into a jersey to stow them rather clumsily on the front of the arm, where I suspect they will flap around and are more likely to get covered in detritus from the front wheel if one is riding without mudguards, is quite silly.
In Assos' defence, it doesn't actively promote this stitched loop as a glasses-storage feature beyond the occasional image of its use as one. It instead focused on the products' other innovations, such as the new, highly insulating POLAR textile found in the GT Spring Fall Bib Tights C2 (another mouthful, I know), which uses 50% recycled fibres; and the longer list of available colourways for the GT Spring Fall Jersey C2.
It's also far from the most egregious ‘innovation for the sake of innovation’ that the bike industry has ever seen, and in use, it won't negatively affect the jersey's performance. It will probably just become an unused tab.
Compared to some of the biggest tech flops – the likes of Vittoria’s reversible tyres – it’s pretty tame. It isn’t even the most daft way we’ve seen of storing one's sunglasses.
That particular accolade must go to the Koo Billy Clip, a stem-mounted aftermarket mount that allowed you to store your sunglasses not in a neat, aerodynamic way about your person, but plonked atop your stem.
Early editions of Koo glasses famously didn't fold, but instead rotated about their hinge through 180 degrees. This created a neat closure, but was largely impossible to do quickly, while riding, or one-handed. It's solution, the Billy, never caught on, and thankfully, more recent editions of Koo's cycling glasses have adopted a typical hinge.
