Fieldsheer Mistral Two-Piece Suit
FIELDSHEER MISTRAL TWO-PIECE SUIT
CW EVALUATION
Full-featured full leathers
JUST AS OUR MOTORCYCLES HAVE BEcome more sophisticated, so has our riding gear. That certainly is the case with the suit you see here, the Mistral jacket and pants, by Fieldsheer. It may at first glance look like the usual, black leather two-piece suit, but this street-dedicated outfit has a number of features more usually found on gear designed for racetrack use.
This suit, Fieldsheer’s top-of-theline street garment, is built with 1.3to 1.4-millimeter-thick cowhide that is extremely soft and supple, and which is doubleand triple-layered in high-stress, high-use areas. There are also two-stage, closed-cell foam pads at the shoulders, elbows and knees, and along the spine and kidney areas, to help protect against injury in case of a fall. The pads seem heavy enough to do their jobs, but thanks to the way they're contoured, they bend with a rider and don’t restrict any of his normal riding movements. Zippered vents at the shoulder front and an action back of perforated leather provide flow-through ventilation in warmer weather. A snap-in. insulated liner adds to the jacket’s coldweather usability.
The jacket, which unlike the jackets of some two-piece sets, is long enough in the torso to work well by itself, attaches to the back of the pants by way of a 7-inch-long zipper. This keeps the jacket from riding up and the pants from working down, and seals against chill drafts of air creeping up the rider’s back. The zipper is attached to the main garment by a strong piece of expandable fabric, and there’s additional expandable fabric in the knees of the pants and in the waist of the jacket, so the whole outfit fits closely, yet doesn’t bind when the rider moves. Pockets on both sides of the jacket, inside and out, and two front pockets in the pants, provide small but significant areas for storage of keys and other small items.
Designed in England and built in Korea, Fieldsheer garments are available only through Fieldsheer dealers, where the Mistral jacket sells for $399 and the pants go for $299. Three color choices are available: all black, black with red-and-white trim, and red with black-and-white trim.
If $700 for a riding outfit seems steep, remember that quality, style, comfort and protection never come cheap, and considering this suit’s virtues and few faults, the price is easier to justify. We wish the zippers in the sleeves and ankles were backed by fabric or leather, so that they didn't occasionally pinch skin and pull hair. Also, the pull-tab for the jacket’s main zipper is on the left side of the zip,not the right,and this means the zipper operates backwards from the ones most Americans are used to.
Still, those are small complaints and don't really detract from the Mistral’s overall usefulness. We were impressed with the amount of thought that apparently has gone into the design and construction of this gear. We like its clean execution and the comfort and protection afforded by its pads and extra layers of leather. Think of it as a sophisticated suit that's stylish and safety oriented.
