What is a 'directional fabric' you might ask? This is where the modern knitting machines get very clever: one face of the fabric is smooth, and the other face is fleecy or honeycomb. If you wear the T-shirt with the fleece face inwards it will pull sweat off your body where the sweat will be evaporated by the smooth face on the outside. This smooth face will encourage any moisture to spread sideways on the surface increasing evaporation and keeping you dry. Of course the fleece side will provide some warmth since it stays mostly dry.
If you wear it smooth side inwards the T-shirt should be cooler. The exposed fleece side will not trap as much warm air, and the smooth side will still pull sweat off your skin. Paramo sent us two T-shirts: one Mens and one Womens. No, that is not us in the photo below. (Look closely: there are actually three people in that photo!) We normally wear our Taslan smocks and Taslan trousers when walking anyhow.
Instead, my wife Sue and I have been wearing these T-shirts on our morning runs. The route is about 8+ km long with a little bit of road running and a lot of rough dirt track with some steep hills to go up and down. The runs takes us about 62 minutes, and yeah, we time them. In summer time, we just have running shorts and one of these T-shirts, and in winter time we usually wear light, long athletic stretch tops and bottoms with the T-shirt over the top for a bit of warmth. Sometimes Sue wears the T-shirt under the long-sleeved top so she can take the long sleeves off if she gets too hot running.
Summer temperatures are usually not too high because we get up early before dawn to get some cool weather. Winter-time, I am a wimp and insist on waiting for the sun to start peeking over the horizon. It can still be sub-zero at that hour of the morning so I am often wearing light ski gloves and a hat of some sort as well.
Regardless of the weather, we get very hot and sweaty. That seems to be expected. Sometimes we have to take some clothing off while returning both in the summer and winter. However, I have to say that these Cambria T-shirts have been very comfortable, and they do not seem to get wet. My old poly-cotton t-shirt would come back soaked sometimes, but these T-shirts do seem to merit Paramo's claim for rapid drying. They come back dry, even if my face is dripping.
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Companion forum thread to: Paramo Cambia T-Shirts
I love my Paramo smock, and I will never get any MexTex clothes again. No matter how "breathable" they are, they are by far not breathable enough to keep you comfortable anywhere else but at a bus-stop. And there, any non-breathable piece of clothing will do. Paramo is breathing well and the smock fabric is an astonishingly dense wave at a reasonable weight (roughly half the weight of a comparable MexTex jacket). In a drizzle, Paramo is far more comfortable than MexTex, and in heavy rain, you need an umbrella or a fully coated, non-breathable piece of clothing (poncho) anyway.
Yeah, breathable. It's getting warmer here (Oz) as we move into spring, and it's not so cold early in the morning when we are running. At the end of our last run (yesterday morning) I was dripping sweat from all over my face, but I still couldn't see any real moist patches on the T-shirt. Cheers
#ERROR!
I have often thought about Paramo but it is a bit pricey with a zip ls being about $85 shipped. Is there a cheaper alternative here in the States that may act similar to see if I like it?
I have a Cambia long sleeve that I picked up for £10 (cheap!). Comfortable and breathable. I sweat too much for any garment to deal with, so I overwhelm whatever wicking is going on. But it does dry quickly. More generally about Paramo… I have tried to love Paramo, and I still use a Paramo jacket around town. It IS freakishly comfortable, and it is great to feel dry but not stuffy. However, I don't bring it on overnight trips. Probably I'm not doing the proofing right, but twice I have had massive failures, where the material suddenly lets all moisture straight through…
> twice I have had massive failures, where the material suddenly lets all moisture > straight through… There is a weakness in all of the non-membrane fabrics: if you get it dirty then the surface tension trick fails and water goes through. Washing it with Sports Wash (NOT domestic laundry powder!) usually restores it. But the Cambrai T-shirts are not meant to be waterproof anyhow. Cheers
Any specs on?
Sorry, not known. Knitted fabric – can't imagine it would be especially susceptible. Cheers
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