Having spent years – quite literally – searching for gloves that did everything, I actually found what I was looking for by accident. I needed a pair of gloves in a hurry so that I could take out a bike, on one of very few occasions where I’ve turned up somewhere in a car and without full riding kit: well it was February.
It was a half decent day, I’d promised myself a pair of simple unlined gloves for a long time, and the only question that remained when looking at the Fostex Longhorns – simple rodeo gloves – was whether to go for black or tan?
Black is always safer – neutral colours work better on riding shots – but most days I wish I’d bought the tan.
They have been everywhere since, and through the sorts of conditions that I’d always anticipated needing expensive gloves for, and we’ve always come out the other side in one piece.
Sure, there are times when I could’ve been warmer or drier, but not for £17, and they’ve bedded–in really nicely. But then that’s the joy of leather.
The palm is appreciably blacker than the backs of them now, and they’re only as dark as they are in the pictures because I put some boot polish on them a couple of weeks ago – they were really starting to fade. More importantly the leather is still supple – despite having been caught in the rain and dried in a hurry on more than a few occasions – the stitching is fine, and if anything they are even more comfortable now than when I bought them, which is why they live in the helmet I wear the most.
I will buy another pair in tan, sometime, but it looks like they’ll have to be the MCS Gloves from Motorcycle Storehouse because all links to Fostex have dried up. They look to be identical and are still a bargain at less than £24, even if the original tan has been replaced by Sand or Brown options.
Longhorn Gloves
(Originally tested in AmV73 May/June 2015)