Grifter Gloves - GEAR EVALUATION

The Grifter Company is a boutique motorcycle apparel maker, specializing primarily in gloves. The styling of Grifter gloves is vintage with a wildly modern twist. Most styles are short wristed, but Grifter now offers the longer-wristed Classics too. A bison-skin palm and thumb are usually featured, and often complemented by a textile backside, though they also have styles that are 100-percent leather, mixing bison with deerskin. Generally, the styles are without wrist closures.

Handmade in Gloversville, New York, at a historic glove-making facility, many of Grifter’s designs are limited productions. Sold-out styles continue to be displayed on the Grifter website to show off the company’s evolving inventive character.

Tried were the sold-out limited-edition Saint X Grifter, and the still-available Bandoleros. The Saint X Grifter gloves have a dyed-white deerskin palm and thumb, with a black Kevlar mix Dyneema textile backside, over a wool-lined interior. They’re half white, they’re all warm, and you can’t get them. But by description alone you can see that they’re not like any other glove. Like all great surfing beaches, you should have been here yesterday.

Nonetheless, you can be here tomorrow. Alongside unannounced limited-edition styles, you can get a pair of the Bandoleros, which have a brown bison-skin palm and thumb, contrasted against a backside of brightly striped Mexican serape fabric, referencing a classic hot rod upholstery fashion of the 1950s. Grifter also has more conventional styles, but all of them are casual motorcycle gloves without armor or a full lining, designed to appeal to the retro café rider. These gloves do not provide cutting edge protection and are for a demographic of rider who do not wear armor or “Storm Trooper” boots.

All of the Grifter gloves run small, so order one to two sizes larger than normal. Also available from Grifter are T-shirts and other casual apparel items.

Grifter Bandolero
www.griftercompany.com
Price: $69.00