Review: Women’s Osloh Porteur jeans
Sometimes it’s simply not practical to get fully Lycra’d up for cycling, or you just might not want to. But this poses the challenge of what to wear. More and more companies are developing products to satisfy the demand of everyday cyclists for clothing that looks good but is functional on a bike as well.
One of those companies is American brand Osloh. The company produces a range of cycling jeans for both men and women. The Porteur is designed specifically for women. It comes in either a navy cavalry twill or a dark indigo denim and is slim fitting.
As someone who finds buying jeans a bit of a headache due to my taller-than-average height of 5' 8", I was surprised and delighted to find that the Porteur’s largest size of 32" with an inside leg of 32" fitted me perfectly – in fact better than a lot of my other jeans.
Women’s cycle clothing is often way too small, even for somebody of average build such as myself, and sometimes seems to have been designed with petite Italian or French racing cyclists in mind, rather than ordinary mortals.
The bike-specific features of these jeans include a padded gusset, an adjustable waistband, extra binding on the seams, a double-line pocket for a mobile phone and a reinforced button fly. The bicycle wheel embroidery is a nice touch.
The jeans are very comfortable to ride in and the slim fit means you don’t have to worry about the bottoms getting caught in the chain, so you can go straight from office or coffee shop to bicycle saddle. They also look and feel like a normal pair of jeans.
The padding in cycle clothing sometimes feels awkward when you’re off the bike, but when wearing the Porteur I forgot about it and could wear it all day at work without feeling like I had a nappy on! I wouldn’t recommend wearing it on the bike with anything other than a very thin other layer underneath, however, as this could cause chafing.
It’s better to wear nothing with a padded gusset, but I’m not sure how that would work if you wanted to wear the jeans every day or more than once. As they are expensive at around £90 a pair, you will want to get the most value per wear out of them!
Although pricey, the Porteur feels like it would last a very long time so probably represents very good value for money. I look forward to seeing more women-specific products in the range in the future.
