Three-layer
Three-layer
Perhaps no other cycling garment relies on its fabric as greatly to fulfill its brief as the rain jacket.
The premium placed on technical fabrics that protect the rider from the elements as well as releasing heat build up is significant.
Gore’s rain-defeating GoreTex fabric is among the most highly respected, and eVent Fabrics, possessed of a similar reputation for breathability, supply Italian cycle clothing brand, Castelli, with a fabric called Pocket Liner.
Castelli use the fabric on the waterproof jacket supplied to the Garmin Sharp UCI WorldTour team, and also in their Muur jacket, the final garment we’ll examine in this guide.
It’s a three-layer jacket, and like the two and two-and-a-half layer jackets considered earlier, its seams are taped rather than stitched.
Unlike, say, the Endura Gridlock II, it does not require features like pit zips for ventilation: the fabric is sufficiently breathable on its own.
Three-layer jackets with sophisticated, rain-thwarting fabrics are also likely to offer an impressive degree of windproofing, and to be reasonably light: they don’t require thickness in the fabric to seal out the water.
As a consequence, features like cuffs and hem tend to be minimal rather than bulky. The high collar, a feature of every jacket we’ve considered, is as much a feature of the three-layer jacket as its cheaper counterparts.
Hilton-Foster groups the Muur with the 2.5 layer Endura Helium and the Pearl Izumi PRO Aero WXB Jacket as those that offer both protection from the elements and breathability.
“Even if it wasn’t raining when it started, but looked as if it was going to, I would happily ride in those in winter,” he says. “They would breathe, and look after me when it throws it down.”