Furygan Crow Jacket - Review Hot

Stylish French leather firm Furygan have just got a renewed presence in the Uk along with a fresh importer who wanted to let us see what they were about, the Crow Jacket was promptly chosen as Leigh's jacket of choice and he puts it through it's paces

Initial Thoughts

Dang! The Crow jacket looks tasty doesn't it? I have seen is a few times and always thought it looked a really well put together piece of kit and worthy of a review so when Furygan's new PR folks got in touch to see what we wanted to test it was a no brainer for me to choose, the mixture of black and white floats my boat totally. First up worth mentioning is the jacket is relatively heavy when you first hoist it up but this is thanks to a revolutionary armour system called D3O, the difference with this stuff is that is is soft and flexible, totally unrestrictive until you introduce it to an impact at which point it hardens up and becomes almost solid - pretty trick! When you take out all the armour and place it beside a typical CE set you notice the weight difference, when you pick up the jacket with the D30 inside you then know why.

Construction

The first time you open up the jacket to put it in you notice the funky lining that is starting to be offered on high end kit, a fixed 3D textured material that is touted to create a micro climate within the jacket and in use this seems to be fairly accurate. There is a lack of any real cooling on the jacket and the panels of punched leather work when up to national speed limits but I found not as useful at lower speed and especially in hot summer weather, one other thing adds to this and creates a slight mobility issue in use and that is the minimal application of stretch Kevlar around the armpits or sleeve area.

I love a bit of stretch, mainly as everyone uses a slightly different riding position and a fairly solid arm to chest joint can lead to restriction and/or movement of the jacket itself, this is one of the only real negatives I can come up with for the review. There is another thing worth mentioning and that is the sleeve length, or lack thereof, I typically find most jackets a touch on the long side which can be annoying but the Furygan Crow is the opposite end in that it is perhaps an inch too short - great if you are shorter in the arm than average and not an issue when you are wearing a full gauntlet glove as I tend to do, in summer though or when the need arises to wear a short cuff glove you can feel a little exposed as the lack of kevlar can bring the sleeve length a bit shorter while riding.

Other than that little niggle I can only really say good things about the Crow jacket by Furygan, the quality is exceptional, styling sublime and the use of current technology is refreshing too. You get lashings of titanium or allow on the shoulders and elbow, stretch panels just above the elbow and a natty half speed hump which works really well as a half way house between full race look and full on speed hump. The leather on this jacket has a treatment to repel water which I cannot really report on how well it worked, the only time I wore the Crow out in the wet it was a sudden downpour - nothing would have stood up to that amount of H20.

People are likely to buy the Crow based on it's looks I think and as I have already said it is a real looker! Tons of people comment on how much they like the jacket which is not something I hear often, the Crow, I think is so distinct that people recognise it and for very good reason.