BSNYC Product Review: Outlier Winterweight OG Pant

(Inconsiderate commuter executes a bare-headed talk-and-salmon.)

Some of you may recall that in the sultry days of last summer--indeed, the day after "Bastille Day," otherwise knows as "Frenchypendence Day"--I hoisted a post onto the Internet about a pair of shorts made by a company called "Outlier." (That's pronounced "OOT-lee-AY.") Well, so pleased were the shortiers at Outlier by my willingness to smear mayonnaise all over myself that this past January they went ahead and sent me a pair of their "Winterweight OG" pants without the slightest bit of solicitation on my part. Here's the description from their webular store:

And here is a more embellished description from their webular site:

Just in time for snow, the Winterweight OGs are back. Made in New York City these pants are designed for life both on and off your bike, all winter long. Yeah you'll see your breath as you cross the bridges and zip past your coworkers trapped in traffic, but you'll wind up at work feeling great and looking better.

The Winterweight fabric is a heavier fleeced back version of our core 4Season fabric with a 3XDry Treatment. Designed to keep you warm and dry no matter where you ride, yet still look good and wear comfortably when you get inside. A four-way stretch ensures you can move freely, handle the repetitive motion of cycling and still look sharp and refined.

The 3XDry treatment is directional. It pushes water in just one direction, away from your body. It wicks away the sweat and moisture, breathes as well as you do, and is seriously water resistant. Most rain, snow or slush just beads up and rolls away. It's a softshell so eventually it will saturate in intense conditions but when it does get wet, you'll find yourself dry in 10-20 minutes when safe from the elements. The doubleweave fabric has Cordura woven towards the outside for durability and a soft fleecy interior for a beautiful warmth and comfort.

Medium lean in cut. Wear it with a sport coat and oxfords or a hoodie with sneakers. More importantly, wear it without thinking, wear it like a second skin, wear it like a classic that works for any occasion. Fits true to size.

Finally, a garment you can wear "without thinking!" I'm so sick of those pants that will only stay up if you constantly do math problems in your head. In any case, while the Outlier pants (or, in fancy-pants parlance, "pant") may have come "Just in time for snow," obviously I'm writing this just in time for spring, so please forgive my lack of punctuality. However, as a great human quote factory once said (I think it was Ralph Waldo Emerson, or maybe Henry David Thoreau), "It takes many months to get to know a pair of pants, though it takes only a few moments to soil them." Also, as it happens, barely a month after I took delivery of the pant(s), I received an intriguing email.

As frequent readers of this blog already know, I employ a helper monkey named Vito, ostensibly to perform the menial tasks with which I can no longer be bothered (such as writing). However, Vito's career has now taken on a life of its own, and more often than not he's off auditioning for film roles (he just landed a supporting part in "Gorillas in the Mist II: Hairy Situations"), doing photo shoots for Smithsonian magazine, or making celebrity appearances for PETA, leaving me to clean the "five Japanese slow-drippers" or pair my own socks. Anyway, the intriguing email I received was from an area high school senior named Spencer Madsen. Spencer (in articulate and sarcastic prose that belied his 17 years) explained that he was feeling generally bored and unfulfilled, and that in some misguided search for meaning he wanted to work as my intern. So, with a pile of unpaired socks sitting beside me as I read this, I agreed to meet with him.

Some time later, I "interviewed" Spencer Madsen in a popular chain coffeehouse. I was impressed with Spencer's intelligence and personable nature, though I was dismayed by the fact that he laughed when I told him I needed somebody to go to the post office and wash bicycles for me. Clearly, as a product of the "Internet generation" Spencer was more interested in an ironic internship than the legitimate sort I performed in my dues-paying years. (I have been yelled at and demeaned by an impressive list of people.) Still, he was undeniably enthusiastic, and he was also demonstrably a good writer. So, after the meeting I filled out the tedious paperwork that is unfortunately becoming an increasingly significant component of "curating" this blog:
As I filled this out, I thought to myself, "If only I had somebody to do this for me," and despite the fact that I was giving Spencer a 2 out of 10 at the time I nonetheless decided to "hire" him. Yes, I now had my very own ironic intern, and I decided the first thing I'd do was make him test out some pants.

(Just in case you're skeptical at this point, I can assure you that, yes, Spencer Madsen does exist, and no, he is not a friend or relative. BSNYC/RTMS Industries Inc. Ltd. LLC strongly disavows the practice of nepotism and is an equal opportunity ironic employer.)

Anyway, back to the Outlier Winter OG pant--which, as you almost certainly noticed already, costs a whopping $188. Obviously, this is a lot of money. In fact, in Outlier's own copy (for a similar garment, the "4Season OG Pant") they say that "you can rock them like Dickies." So, why not just actually "rock" Dickies? They only cost like $20 or $30, depending on where you buy them, and like the Outlier "pant" they can be worn with a dress shirt and shoes in a "business casual" situation, or with sneakers and a t-shirt in a "faux dive bar" situation. This is what I generally do--though I will admit that, depending on your saddle choice, Dickies can be susceptible to "ass wear." Here are a few of my own:

Now, I should say that all of these have seen a fair amount of use, and I'm sure plenty of readers have experience with other relatively inexpensive work pants that hold up better. Still, "ass wear" can be a factor with almost any "pant," and it can also be potentially embarrassing. The pair on the right are particularly worn, and substituting a lemon for my "pants yabbies" illustrates the extreme consequences of the phenomenon:

Of course, I always wear underpants with Dickies, but I do tend to go "commando" when it comes to filling them with citrus fruits.

So what about the Outlier "pant?" Well, after three months of pretty frequent use the posterior portion is in very good shape:

Moreover, they're quite comfortable, and they do handle moisture the way Outlier describes:

Still, is the Outlier pant worth like eight pairs of Dickies? Even if they outlast eight pairs of Dickies, you still only have one pair of pants, whereas with cheap pants you can at least rotate (and you can also make cheap jokes about sitting on Dickies and rotating). Also, commuting to work on a racing-type saddle will certainly wear out your fabric since they're often designed to have a bit of grip when used with lycra shorts as they're intended, whereas a wider, more "comfort"-oriented saddle will be decidedly more pants-friendly. So, in pure economic terms, you're probably just better off changing the saddle on your commuter and simply using the pants you already have.

But there's more to pants than posterior durability; there's also style. Can you "wear it with a sport coat and oxfords or a hoodie with sneakers"? Well, I don't wear a sport coat or dress shoes unless somebody close to me is either getting married or buried and I have to attend the concomitant ceremony. Still, for the purposes of "testing" these out, I got a little "dressed up:"

I call this my "Reservoir Douche" look, and to compliment it I grabbed one of my "test-cycles:"

Here I am riding to my pretend job at a bank, insurance company, or legal firm:

Of course, when you're riding a bike like the Electra Amsterdam, you don't need specially-engineered pants since the drivetrain is totally enclosed and you're sitting bolt-upright on a wide vinyl seat. Really, it's about as hard on your pants as sitting in a Honda Accord or riding the Long Island Railroad--which is why I doubt most of the commuters in Amsterdam or Copenhagen bother to spend $188 on cycling-specific technical dress pants. Really, we only need them in cities like New York, where people who work in fields like advertising and design feel they need to commute to work on designer fixies or "vintage" road bikes with embroidered saddles.

In any case, I felt conflicted about these pants. They were comfortable and they were apparently durable, but they were also $188. It was time to put my new ironic intern to work and see what he would make of them, for even though these are pants designed for going to the office and Spencer is a 17 year-old high school kid with no job I figured his youthful perspective would be helpful somehow. So I had Outlier send him a pair. To give you some background, here's Spencer himself on his own personal dressing and riding style:

Let's keep in mind that although I'm 17 and live in New York, my style isn't exactly 'hip' and while I pull off skinny jeans from time to time, my daily wear pretty standard: A T-shirt and blue jeans. For cycling however, I switch it up, I wear a T-shirt and shorts. No lycra, no spandex, no skin-tight torn black pants that I bought vintage at a thrift shop for eight bucks or something because I don't shop at name-brand stores like you tools. I'm neither a roadie nor fixster, nor a douchily shaved Italian railroad worker with an enormous credit card debt due largely to things like spending $180 on a pair of pants.

So when presented with these chinos, I was unsure of what to think. My first reaction was their comparative likeness to the Dickies pants ubiquitous to my prepubescent skateboarding phase.

As you can see, Spencer is an ideal ironic intern--he's only 17, but he's already dismissively describing the folly of his "prepubescent skateboarding phase."

Anyway, once Spencer had the pants, I instructed him to evaluate them in the following categories: Fit; Style; Peer Response; and Performance. Here are his results:

Fit

The OGs, like all super-complex things made from biologically engineered materials like “The Shoeller Dryskin Extreme Fabric” require ample description. The blurb for this garment epitomizes these pants as the do-it-all of cycling wear, and they do indeed do it all. The fit is very particular, and rather insulting to a guy of 5'7. With a waist size of 27, I've always considered my build average–– My doctor's never commented on my weight/height ratio, though maybe he's just been polite. Insecurities aside I slipped these pants on and the first thought was textural, with the flexibility of a lesser-lycra, the thickness and feel of light sweatpants and the appearance of expensive slacks, these chinos have a truly unique character. Snug around my waist, they felt comfortable. I zipped up the fly and fastened the button above, immediately realizing I was only half done. With a two-fold security system the button-through-a-slit mechanism is just phase one, hook-through-a-hole is what seals the deal. Fears of being 'pantsed' quelled, I took a few steps forward, noticing my feet hidden amongst rolls of “The Shoeller Dryskin Extreme Fabric” I bent over to cuff the hems of each leg. Once, twice, three times before they stopped dragging on the floor. Now I gave both Outlier and my stature the benefit of the doubt and looked at the online-photos to see if these pants were meant to be rolled up, hoping to maintain my notion that 5'7 is a fine height for a male. Much to my dismay, however, the only times a model rocked cuffed pants were to avoid the bicycle chain. So sporting thrice-cuffed pants, I took a gander at the mirror. They looked alright, I thought, and got ready for school.

I think what Spencer's trying to say is that they fit well but were long. I guess kids today don't know how to "hit up" the tailor.

Style

My commute is an hour each way and I normally doze off to my tunes on the train or fall asleep on the shoulder of some stranger beside me. That morning, however, the OGs dominated my thoughts. I have always felt silly wearing sweatpants in public. They offer a little too much freedom for my taste. The OG's gave me a similar sense of nudity, but I knew I looked snazzy. They're not as form fitting as I'd like, and this may just be my personal preference, but in the mirror my legs looked pretty shapeless. As a cyclist I jump at any opportunity to flex my chiseled lower-limbs, and opportunity this was not. For the purposes of the pants though, I understood. Tight pants aren't yet appropriate in the workplace.

I agree that the Outlier pants feel sweatpantsy, though I am concerned about Spencer's tendency to shift the review away from the garment and to his own legs.

Peer Response

The moment I walked into school Wednesday morning, I half-expected looks, comments, even concerns as I made my way to my locker. My usually plain blue denims were now replaced by something that had “self-cleaning nanosphere treatment” technology. I was wearing the brainchild of a mad—yet fashionable—scientist, and no one seemed to notice. I went over to the Hipster posse who had just finished their milk-and-two-sugars coffees and reeked of Cloves. I told them about this company Outlier and pitched the pants to them, as they stared blankly. One of them played with a lighter. I asked if any of them rode track bikes, and two responded, saying they had “Fixies” with “Deep V's.” but they couldn't wrap their mind around $180 for a pair of pants from a brand they didn't recognize.

I proceeded to lunch, which meant loitering in the sixth floor hallways. My friends, who were aware of my wearing these pants prior to the day all said one thing when they saw me: “Where are they?” I guess the cost and science of these pants are not apparent to the untrained eye. I explained “This is it, I'm wearing the pants now,” which was surprising, to all of them. I did get a “Whoa!” or two when they felt the material, though. They didn't expect the feel of “Thick faux-spandex” as one of them put it. “They're meant for cycling as well as the work place,” I told them “So you can ride to work, and everyone thinks you're wearing slacks.” The idea prompted some interest, but the star of the discussion, as usual, was Julian's Extra Cheddar Goldfish. He shares, sometimes.

I guess Outlier have no cachet with the under-21 "hipster" community.

Performance

The only pants I've ever ridden in are my blue jeans. I ride my fixed-gear in jeans all the time, and it's fine, really. It's just on my road bike that pants making riding seem impossible. On my road bike, it's torture wearing jeans, truly. I hate it. I'd rather take my bike on the train, go home and change then spend more than twenty minutes riding in pants. So to put the OG's to the test, I took out my road bike and went for a rather chilly winter ride.

With one leg cuffed to my shoe, and another to my knee (No chain guard, no problem) I rode around, up hills, down hills, up curbs, keeping a steady 15 mph. Five minutes in I experienced no problems, ten minutes in, no fatigue. Twenty minutes in my legs felt fine. I kept going, as I hadn't ridden anything with a freewheel all winter, and enjoyed a 20 mile ride to Manhattan's upper west side and back. Despite my nose running like a faucet, it was an unusually nice ride, and thirty minutes in I completely forgot I was wearing pants. It wasn't until I was back in my neighborhood that I realized why I was riding, and immediately forgave the lesser-lycra feel. It's a sacrifice that's well worth the performance.

The next week it rained, and according to Outlier, the OG's repel drizzle, so off to school I went once more. Half expecting to see rain drops directed towards my legs to veer away from my force-field woven nanospheres, I walked at a leisurely pace to the train station. The drops hit my pants like any other item of clothing, but instead of being absorbed into the fabric they just kinda sat there, on the surface. So while 'repel' may not be the right word, these chinos are water resistant, a brisk shake and all the water fell to the ground.

Spencer has just come up with Outlier's new tagline: "I completely forgot I was wearing pants."

In conclusion, I will say that the Outlier pants do exactly what the makers claim they will do, though they don't do so cheaply. If you absolutely must ride a race bike to a job that requires you to look like you didn't ride a race bike to work, then you may want these pants, and you also may not balk at the price. To me, though, the real revelation is Spencer, who delivered a quality review for free--making him an excellent bargain.

Posted in: bicycle product review