Forty-Seven-Panel Construction and Graphene Lining Cannot Replace the Character of a Suit That Took Five Years to Break In
The New Wetsuit Is Better at Everything Except Being Yours
The surf industry’s annual winter wetsuit release cycle has produced this season what brands are describing as a revolutionary leap in thermal technology — a forty-seven-panel construction using graphene-infused neoprene, laser-cut seams, and a collar design validated by a professional surfer who surfs in conditions that the target customer will never experience but finds aspirationally relevant. The suit retails at six hundred and twenty dollars and is, by all technical measures, significantly better than the suit it replaces.
Southern California surfers who have reviewed the new suit confirm the thermal performance. They also confirm, in a separate and more emotionally weighted part of the conversation, that the new suit lacks the decade of accumulated character of the suit it is notionally replacing — the one hanging in the garage that technically needs replacing, that they have repaired with neoprene glue in seven places, that their partner has asked them to throw away on four separate occasions, and that fits them so precisely because it has physically conformed to their body over four hundred sessions in ways that a factory in Asia cannot anticipate.
The Case for the Old Suit
‘I know exactly where this suit leaks,’ said San Clemente surfer Dave Erikson, forty-four, standing next to a wetsuit that appears to be held together primarily by nostalgia and a willingness to have cold water enter at the neck. ‘Left shoulder seam. A little bit at the left knee. Slightly at the back zip. I know where it’s going to be cold before I get in the water. That is information. That is relationship. The new suit is technically superior but I would have to start the process over and the process takes years.’
Industry analysts note that the average Southern California surfer replaces a wetsuit every three to five years rather than the manufacturer-recommended two, primarily for reasons that have more to do with emotional attachment than with the suit’s technical condition. ‘The product we are competing with is not other wetsuits,’ admitted one brand executive at an industry conference last year. ‘The product we are competing with is the customer’s own suit from four years ago. And that suit has one advantage we cannot engineer our way around: it’s theirs.’
Full reviews at Stab Magazine. Comedy: The Daily Mash.
SOURCE: http://prat.UK